In Lonely Exile
by Harry O'Henth
Summary: There is nothing new under the sun, for all things that have come before will come again. First he was a soldier, then a slave. This is the story of an exile finding purpose for himself and his people by undertaking a journey that will change the course of the Galaxy forever, and perhaps bring an end to the endless.
1. Prologue

Prologue

"Look at the sky and tell me what you see," the father told the son. This far from the city the stars were still quite visible, and there were no clouds to obscure them as they danced ponderously high above the earth. There was a cool evening breeze slithering through the grass. The young boy snuggled his face against the soft fur of his father's chest before turning his brilliant crimson eyes to the sky once more.

"I see stars," he replied half-heartedly, raising a small hand and gesturing broadly above. Father gave a low _hroom, hummm_ and caught his son's hand in his own much broader palm.

"Well, certainly," he said, guiding their joined fingers to indicate certain stars. "But what do these stars make when they all come together?"

Some of the insistently twinkling lights were blue, others were yellow, and yet others were red. Some were big, and some were small, some were sliding across the canopy of the night sky and others were anchored firmly in their places. Sometimes a bright star would zip across the canvas like a shot from a cannon, marking the sky with a glowing scar. The young boy followed his father's pointing fingers, but his gaze was lost in the vast multitudes of the heavens. Giving up, he closed his eyes and turned his head into his father's fur.

A low rumbling purr vibrated in the larger male's chest, and he released his son's hand to turn the boy's face back to the sky with an insistent finger. "Never give up so quickly," he admonished gently. "Some things only become apparent through time and observation. Now, what if I told you that the stars make the image of a mighty warrior-king, wielding his spear and shield? Can you see it now?"

Now that Father pointed it out, Amos could only just make out the image. There were some stars making the belt, others forming the shield, and lines which could have been his arms. "I see it!" he exclaimed.

"It is harder to see, now that the city is so bright and so near," Father said. "Some of his stars have gone dark. But that, my son, is Thereus, son of Phersus, god of warfare and of warriors. He was the one who wrote the Creed in stone back when the world was young and full of strife. Touched by the stars themselves, he was wise beyond his years. It was he who led his armies to conquer the mighty fortress Tyre, the namesake of the colony you know from school. Nothing remains of ancient Tyre because when he had conquered the city, he burned every building and leveled every stone, for he never wanted to face another Tyronian on the field of battle again so long as he lived."

Amos' young, active imagination conjured the images of a city aflame, of people scurrying about in the streets, and of a mighty king standing above the cackling flame and smoke with his spear held above his head, declaring his victory in sight of the heavens. "Did he really exist, Papa?"

"No, cub," Father rumbled softly. His voice was a mixture of gentle chiding and sorrow. "Or if he did, he was no god."

"Why are there stars that look like him if he isn't a god?" Amos wondered aloud. He turned to look at Father's face. In the starlight, he looked especially stoic, and his bold crimson eyes glowed so brightly in the night that Amos hardly recognized the features of his sire.

"The stars were special to us once," he said, and a sad smile ghosted upon his face. But it was gone as quickly as it had come, replaced with Father's usual expression, which was about as expressive as a slab of marble. "We gave so much of ourselves reaching out to the heavens, and look where it got us?"

Now, Father's free hand gestured to the silhouette of the city in the distance, illuminated by the lights in a thousand windows. It was clear just by looking at the skyline that the city had been ravaged by some terrible calamity. Some of the shadows were conspicuously short and jagged, and others were shrouded in foreboding dark.

"Ah, but what am I saying?" Father shook his head. He rolled onto a shoulder and loomed above his son like a cresting wave. Suddenly his fingers began questing for Amos' ticklish underarms, and the boy was forced to come to his senses. A startled laugh burst from his lips as he rolled away and pounced onto his Father's shoulders, growling as ferociously as he could as a ten-year-old Surrassi boy.

A rare smile graced Father's face as he caught his son in his arms and beheld his ferociousness. Before he could say anything, however, Amos managed to squirm free and topple the mountain of muscle and fur. Together they crashed into the grass, and Amos reared up victoriously, digging his claws into the tough skin of his father's shoulders.

"Aha!" he declared.

Hardly had the exclamation escaped him before the world began to turn and he found himself in a cage of hard limbs. Even his tail was caught up, and he blinked as Father leaned down to stare into his eyes. "Aha, you say?" he rumbled ominously, crimson eyes dancing. "Aha?!"

Helpless, Amos could do nothing save beg for mercy as he was tickled without remorse. The only thing that saved him was Mother, standing at the top of the hill. The sound of his laughter must have reached the house.

"Amosch!" she barked with her hands on her hips and her tail swishing over her shoulder. Despite the way her words cracked like a whip across Father's broad shoulders, a smile was playing around her lips and her emerald eyes twinkled like the gentle stars above. "What are you doing to my son?"

At once Father sat up with a bright gleam in his eyes, and Amos had a moment to gasp for air. Rising smoothly to his feet, Father ascended the slope and picked Mother up into his arms, even as she protested and swatted at his arms. "Put me down, you big oaf!"

"Make me," he rumbled, burying his face into the crook of her neck. Amos watched from the grass for only a moment, before scampering back to the house; there was no reason for him to stick around when his parents were acting like _that._

* * *

Amos caught the sound of voices wafting up the stairs to his bedroom, and he stirred from a peaceful slumber. He rubbed his eyes and yawned, baring a mouthful of sharp fangs, before he sat up. The sun's warm crimson light shone through his open window and cast long shadows across the floor, and the sky was painted saffron with the break of dawn.

"...tell him about the Old Ways," Amos' mother was saying. They were making an effort to be quiet, but Surrassi have acute hearing, and Amos had no trouble making out the sound of her hushed voice despite the solid walls between his room and the kitchen.

His father's low timbre was much easier to hear. "He deserves to know his heritage. Besides, he thinks that I'm telling children's stories and wild tales. I suppose a lot of them amount to nothing more than that, in the end."

"His heritage is exactly why you oughtn't have told him!" his mother hissed. Amos winced, imagining her furious expression. He didn't know why she was angry, but he knew that making Mother angry was always a bad idea. Even if it was fun to poke the slumbering bear sometimes.

"What? Are you afraid that he will end up like me?" Father asked sharply. "An old, useless relic of an ancient past, without purpose or value? _You_ are not the only one who fears that. However, allowing him to grow into adulthood without providing proper guidance would be a crime against him and a dishonor to me."

Amos wondered at his Father's description of himself. Surely, he was speaking in jest? "Proper guidance does not consist of myths and legends. Truly raising him in the Old Ways, even if he considers them only bedtime stories, will serve only alienate him from his peers. The Lord decreed that none of the Old Ways would survive in the coming generations."

"Is the Lord of the city also your husband and the father of your son?" Amosch rumbled rhetorically. "His place is to rule and defend the City in the name of the King, not to interfere in his subjects' family matters. Besides, I have no issues with alienating my son from a gaggle of mindless _herd animals_ such as the rest of his weak generation."

"The Lord could have you killed! The King's own laws forbid dissemination of the Old knowledge," Mother warned. Amos started and shrank under the warm covers of his bed, contemplating the idea of interrupting the argument. He felt like this was something he should not be eavesdropping upon. "And regardless of your opinion of Amos' peers, you know as well as anyone that Surrassi are not meant to exist in isolation. Even your Creed tells you that much."

"Telling my son bedtime stories under the stars, as fathers have done throughout the generations for countless years in the past, is not grounds for execution and you know it, even under these new laws," Father replied firmly. There was a pause. Amos strained to hear what was happening. "My love, allow me to reassure you. The only thing that I live for is my family; I am utterly devoted to you both. I understand that you are afraid for Amos, for I, too, am terrified. Should he suffer the same illness of spirit that has befallen our people in recent years...I should never forgive myself. But, unlike the King, I don't see complete ignorance of our history as a solution to the problem."

"Why must you insist on the Old Ways? You of all people should know how dangerous false hope can be." What did Mother mean by that?

"There will come a day when my son will become a man, but that day can only come when he defines himself," Father said firmly. "it is always easier to do that when there is a standard against which one can be held accountable. When there is truth, all things become clearer. Would it not be better for our son to build a life for himself by his own merits rather than looking for fulfillment in the boyish diversions of his peers? I, for one, wish to ensure that the only thing which shall carry on the legacy of my flesh when am dead and rotting has some semblance of manhood about him, even if the things that he may achieve in the face of this new age are doomed to fall short of his capacity for wonder."

"Oh, Amosch," Mother hummed. There was a lot of meaning contained in those two words, but from what Amos could decipher it appeared that she was conceding a few points in favor of Father's argument, although he could tell that she was not about to give up so easily. Amos figured that she was probably embracing Father, or would soon be doing so; they never allowed arguments to last longer than a single day as a matter of principle. Amos smiled and turned over in his bed. The sun was warm upon his face as he fell back into a restful sleep, thinking about what his father had said and wondering what he meant.


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

"My lord, Seneschal Rodorian is here to offer a report," Lord Marvalian Branka's most trusted bodyguard and the head of his secret service informed him from the door of the lord's office. Dressed in dark black robes with gold embroidery, the lord stood at the window overlooking his city, with his back to the door. "My lord, I have advised you to remain away from the windows and to never show your back to a door."

"You shall have to remind me at least one more time, I fear," Lord Branka said as he took an obliging step away from the window. He regarded his adviser with a rather condescending tilt of his head, surveying the rest of his office with his extra pair of sharp eyes. "The glass is reinforced against most forms of attack, and I knew that you were standing at the door. What have I to fear?"

"Your trust in me is not misplaced, my lord," Rutler replied, bowing his head deeply. "The seneschal?"

"Let him in," Lord Branka said rather dismissively.

Rutler stepped back through the door and a moment later an extravagantly dressed individual with the bearing and majesty of a king stepped through the open portal, seeking out Lord Branka's eyes as he dropped into a half-kneeling bow. He had been the adviser to the estate for years longer than Lord Branka had been its ruler, and his wisdom was an asset to the House.

"My lord," he greeted.

Branka approached and pulled the seneschal to his feet by his hands, holding them tight in his own. The jeweled bangles around the older Batarian's wrists rattled together. Rodorian wore the most expensive clothing and jewelry of anyone in the House because he was the one who was in contact with people that Lord Branka wanted to impress. When Lord Branka met with someone in person, his appearance was met to be fearsome and dignified, not needlessly rich and gaudy. "My friend and trusted servant," he answered. "What can I do for you today?"

"My lord is too kind," Seneschal Rodorian demurred, returning the warm grip of his hands. "I only wished to offer my report on recent events and appraise you as to the status of your estates."

"Please," Lord Branka said, gesturing to a chair. "I was having an enjoyable day, it is only sensible for it to come to an end at last."

"I shall endeavor to make it as painless as possible," the seneschal replied dryly. "In truth, only one matter is of real importance."

"Please start with that, then, before I become drowsy," Lord Branka said, leaning forward in anticipation. In the years following his father's assassination, he had held onto the family's position of power through the surgical application of force, but the days of excitement and conflict had ended, and his recent months had been spent in peace and boredom. Although it was refreshing not to be targeted constantly, Lord Branka couldn't help but feel that he had been more excited to be an aristocrat when he had been competing for the position.

Seneschal Rodorian began without further ado. "Upon your orders, a fleet of scouts was assembled and tasked with exploring the systems surrounding the colony. Your predecessors deemed this unnecessary, as there were other pressing concerns at the time, but leaving the territory unexplored was a waste of potential resources. Now, a detachment has returned with news of the expedition."

"That was quick," Lord Branka noted. It had only been three weeks. Given the fact that the neighboring systems were not connected by Mass Relays, travel between them could take anywhere from two to four days. There were almost a hundred systems which were close enough to the colony that it was financially feasible to establish mining operations, should any valuable resources be discovered.

"Yes, well, they did not have to go far before they found something extremely...troubling," Rodorian said. He paused for a moment, and Branka gesticulated violently with impatience. "They have found alien lifeforms, my lord."

At once excitement and terror coursed through Branka's veins. "What kind of alien lifeforms?"

"There is a primitive civilization developing right on the borders of the Hegemony," Rodorian reported. "Initial reports show that while they have the ability to travel through space, it is exceptionally slow. They have a great host of ships orbiting their planets, but most of them are smaller than frigates and none of them match the size of your flagship."

"Planets?" Lord Branka asked, dreading the answer. "How many systems?"

"Just the one, my lord. There are two populated worlds in the same system. The scouts say that they have not yet been spotted by the primitives, at least at the time that the detachment departed to inform us of the situation. They were in the process of constructing a covert communications buoy in the system's outer reaches to facilitate a direct line of communication with you."

Lord Branka leaned back in his chair and folded his fingers beneath his chin. His foot rapped against the floor. This could either be extremely lucrative or utterly disastrous. The Hegemony had signed a plethora of treaties with the Citadel Council, who would expect such knowledge to be shared with them as soon as it was discovered, but the self-righteous bastards would undoubtedly swoop in to extend protection to the aliens, and that would put the territory surrounding their home world into contention. Considering that this was a fringe colony and the aliens were native to the space, Branka labored under the assumption that the Council would take the primitive's side in any territorial dispute.

Which meant he would lose his holdings. Lord Branka could see already his title slipping from his fingers along with everything that his family had spent a hundred years building. That was unacceptable.

He had several options available to him. He could exploit the aliens, ignore the aliens, or exterminate the aliens. Contacting them peacefully would prove to be more trouble than it was worth. It would require a team of scientists to decode their language and customs, a diplomatic team to initiate contact, a fleet to escort the diplomats. All of that would have to be done in secret, which was essentially an impossibility. Word would get out. No, it was too great an undertaking. Exploiting or destroying the aliens made it inevitable that their existence would likewise leak out. Too many people were involved for it to remain a secret.

But if the aliens were already subjugated or destroyed, the Council would have no reason to revoke the Hegemony's right to the territory. The other Batarian nobles were heartless; they could hardly care less about a species of primitive aliens. No matter what Branka did, he was sure that the Hegemony would never revoke his territory unless the Council could provide a party with prior claim. He had enough friends among the nobility that he could bring any tribunal on the issue to a standstill.

The heartlessness of the Hegemon and his aristocracy had its downsides. He could see the Hegemony throwing his neck on the chopping block to save face on the galactic theater. Lord Branka would have to moderate his response to minimize the outrage from other Council races.

He winced. Slavery was a hot topic among most of the other council races, save for the Krogan, who frankly didn't give a damn, and the Salarians who would sign away their life in contract if the rewards were suitable to the cost. The Salarians sided with the Asari because the blue whores had the slimy amphibians by their proverbial nut-sacks politically speaking. The Turians were adamantly—and hypocritically—against slavery, but neither did they desire to go to war with the Hegemony, since their soldiers would ultimately be the ones paying the blood price on the front lines of such a conflict. The Humans and the Asari were the real trouble.

Humans had a history with slavery which made it a...controversial topic. There were nations on Earth that still practiced certain forms of slavery, but there were other nations which adamantly opposed anything remotely resembling it. Of course, the popular idea of slavery in the most important Human nations wasn't even remotely similar to the Batarian tradition, but since there _were,_ unfortunately,plentifulexamples of abuse in the Hegemony, the Alliance was justified in raising the issue of sentient rights.

Slavery in the Hegemony was more like the caste systems of some ancient Human societies, since the slaves were considered to have rights beyond their value as property, but that didn't seem to matter to the stubborn Humans. Every Batarian knew that owning a slave was not the same as owning a skycar or a washing machine, for example. Honor was meant to dictate that slaves were at least offered safety and food enough to survive in return for whatever labors they performed. There were some thugs and criminals in the Hegemony, however, and they had no compunctions committing the sorts of despicable acts that incensed Human diplomats.

Truly, no matter what the Human politicians said, the matter of slavery, like everything else, eventually boiled down to _economics_. The Alliance came out strongly against slavery because of the Batarian outlaws performing raids in the Traverse in Human colonies. Piracy was the number one threat to colonies in that sector of space. It was also the reason for almost seventy percent of Alliance military casualties since the Relay-314 Incident. The Alliance figured that they could save a lot of lives and money by putting pressure on the Hegemony to outlaw the practice which incentive pirate raids. Branka had a feeling that Humans would not have done anything about slavery at all if it had simply come down to a moral objection.

The Asari's dislike for slavery was a different matter. Ilium had their indentured servitude contracts, and the rest of the Republics only outlawed such documents legally, but the Asari still treated debts as de facto contracts and certain practices resembling slavery existed throughout the Republics. They had no historical aversions to it, but they had come to dislike slavery in the Hegemony because whenever an Asari was enslaved by raiders it was extremely likely that she would end up in the sex industry.

The despicable practice of whoring out slaves for money catered to the lowest dregs of Batarian society; it pandered to the base perversions and fetishes of the worst kind of scum. The idea of abusing slaves for sexual pleasure was abhorrent—it violated the tenets of the Batarians' most popular religion—and such behavior had been outlawed many hundreds of years ago. However, those laws applied only officially applied to Batarians, for they had been written before the existence of aliens had been discovered. A simple correction of wording was all that was required, but the nobility was dragging its feet and proving to be incredibly stubborn on the matter. Some, if not a majority, of the nobles were spineless worms and heartless bastards, after all, and they managed to make a pretty penny off the lowlifes in the Hegemony.

The issue was not brought up with the Alliance because there were still places on Earth where the same sex industry could be found, operated by Humans upon Humans, making it incredibly difficult for the Alliance to pretend that they stood on the moral high ground in that respect. And no one wanted to rape Salarians or Turians, even perverted Batarian criminals.

Branka didn't think anyone had ever dared to enslave a Krogan female. He imagined the response from Tuchanka would be...explosive. not to mention the difficulty in performing the act.

Regardless of the reasons, neither the Alliance nor the Asari Republics would be happy to discover Lord Branka enslaving a whole race of primitive aliens on the fringes of Hegemony space. But, they would be less outraged at that than outright genocide. The Turians and the Salarians would hopefully be reluctant to go to war, and they had demonstrated a willingness to purge species from the galaxy in the past, so they could not honestly pass judgement on the matter, especially since the Hegemony was officially outside of their jurisdiction. That made it a political battle.

And Branka could bring any political matter to a stalemate easily enough.

The logic in favor of ignoring the aliens was untenable. Sure, the issue would subside for the moment, but in a decade or two the aliens would surely begin to proliferate and then the problem would be worse. They would have an even more entrenched claim upon their local territory, and they would have developed better technology with which to resist future attacks upon their sovereignty.

Negotiation was out; it provided the Hegemony with no legal recourse with which to contest the territory. Genocide was out; it would engender too much hostility from the Council. It looked like subjugation was the best choice.

"Seneschal," Lord Branka said suddenly, startling his old friend from his thoughts. They had been sitting in silence for almost five minutes. "Send the detachment back to the fleet with the best scientists you can find on Terenum. I want a diverse collection of specialists. Tell them to study the aliens and the local space without making contact. Have them send a weekly report once the communications buoy is active and linked to our network."

"Of course, my lord," Seneschal Rodorian inclined his head. "Shall I do that immediately?"

"Nay," Lord Branka held up a hand as Rodorian made to stand. "Please, finish your report. Then get some sleep and go about your duties in the morning."

"As you wish my lord."

After some hours of deliberation about taxes, politics, and matters of estate Seneschal Rodorian departed and Rutler stepped into the office at Lord Branka's call. He stood before the desk, despite the fact that Branka gestured for him to sit down.

"It would be improper," he declined with a deferential nod of his head. "What would you have of me, my liege?"

"Ach, you are as stubborn as an ox!" Lord Branka exclaimed, baring his needle-teeth. "I wanted to ask you to put together a small group of military strategists and special operatives. A team of twelve. Our best agents outside of my personal guard. They will be accompanying the science team that Seneschal Rodorian is putting together tomorrow. All of this is to be held in the strictest confidence. If you have any indication that anyone from the scouting party, science team, or accompanying military assets are considering leaking information, have them eliminated. I don't care if they appear to be essential to the team; they can be replaced. And do not allow anyone from the scouting expedition to return to Terenum until I give you the word."

"It will be as you say," Rutler said. He hesitated, and Lord Branka sensed that he had something to say.

"Speak your mind," he ordered. He considered Rutler a friend, but there was a difference in social rank, and the order was the easiest way to get the Batarian to tell him what was on his mind.

"I feel that you are too familiar with Seneschal Rodorian, my lord," Rutler said reluctantly. Lord Branka blinked his four eyes in surprise. "It is dangerous to be too open with your servants."

"Yes, our relationship is rather unique," Lord Branka acknowledged quietly. He sighed. "I trust your judgment in these matters, but you know that he was the only thing that kept me alive throughout our recent trials with the pretenders and he has been the proprietor of this estate for decades, serving my father and grandfather faithfully. I perhaps feel that I owe him and his family a debt. He is old and content; I doubt that any harm shall come of it. You have my blessing to watch him, however, if only to ease your mind."

"A mind at ease is a mind at risk, my lord," Rutler replied simply. Branka could tell that there was likely a shadow following Rodorian around already. Along with taps on all his communications and cameras in his private quarters.

Dammit Rutler.

"Just don't tell me if you see anything too embarrassing," Lord Branka said, chuckling wryly. "I try to respect the privacy of my friends, if I can help it."

Rutler bowed low and left his lord to his thoughts.


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Shepard swept his eyes across the roaring flames dispassionately, wishing for the umpteenth time that he had brought his gear with him on scheduled leave. It was not usually permitted for Alliance soldiers to take equipment with them off-duty, in fact it was considered one step short of desertion. N7s had a little more leeway in such matters, and many of them chose to pay out of pocket for upgraded equipment anyway. Still, John was left without desperately needed weapons, and was forced to make do with what he had.

For a moment cold sorrow flickered across his awareness like the scorching southern gale which swept smoldering embers through the streets, but he dismissed the feeling after a moment. Elysium was a proud colony, inhabited by strong, determined pioneers. They would not fall to these raiders so easily. They would not be broken.

It took a certain type of person to qualify for the N7 program, and only a select few of the candidates proved to have the required mettle to graduate. No matter what he wore, be it civvies, full commando regalia, or ratty conscript armor, Shepard remained a soldier. Holding the familiar Lancer assault rifle grounded him in the moment. The heft of the deadly weapon swept away fleeting distractions like the whirling red cyclones dancing upon the horizon.

Shadows flitted in the smoke and Shepard was moving again. His body pulsed blue and a misty cerulean haze seeped from his armored body and colored the smoky air around him. His gun flicked up, spitting bullets, and the battle began once again. The momentary respite had lasted less than five minutes, which was more than Shepard had expected, but less than he would have liked.

The fact that the inexpensive, green militiaman's uniform Shepard wore lacked a kinetic barrier would have worried anyone who wasn't biotic. As the raiders spotted their opponent in the street and opened fire, the thin mist quickly solidified into a pulsing barrier. Little projectiles, no bigger than a rough grain of sand, struck John as he danced across the open thoroughfare, but they simply stuck firmly in the biotic corona and hung suspended in the coursing currents of energy like nuts in a jello dessert. The strain of maintaining such a shield under fire was considerable, but hundreds of hours of endurance training had tempered Shepard's resolve.

He would hold this intersection or he would die trying. Grimly, he considered the fact that he would likely end up joining the forty volunteers that had followed him, placed under his command by the gruff Militia Captain. Their corpses were strewn throughout the streets; they had been cut down as they beat a disorganized retreat from superior forces. This intersection was as far as they could afford to withdraw without compromising the flanks of the entrenched defenders on the northern side of the city.

No one had expected them to come from the south. Drop-ships had been seen landing in the north, far from the wildfires which had started when burning wreckage plummeted from low orbit into the dry, dusty fields of Elysium's swaying silver grain. The pyrocumulus clouds had swept in above the city, pregnant with thunder and bristling with lances of bright yellow lightning, and with them had come a full company of Batarian raiders. They must have flown in low, around the outskirts of downtown.

With communications jammed, Shepard had no way of alerting the embattled defenders that they were liable to be struck from the rear. And after an hour of relentless skirmishes, he had finally been pushed against a wall.

The rest of his volunteers were either dead or otherwise unaccounted for. John wouldn't have blamed them for running. Most of them had been damn kids, too stupid or courageous to recognize that they were outclassed in every way.

The Batarians were ignoring the buildings on either side of the road unless they took fire from the windows. John discovered quickly that they responded immediately to threats from the second story, mostly by plastering the side of the building with rocket fire and ruthlessly sweeping the ground floor.

After the first gaggle of terrified civilians had been gunned down without remorse, Shepard had avoided stationing his defenders in the surrounding structures. These raiders were a bludgeon, an instrument of shock. They were not rounding up slaves; they were meant to break the back of the defending militia.

John ducked behind a building and allowed his rifle to cool. The gun hissed and squirmed in his hands as it sucked air across its heated mechanisms. A few short seconds later grenades were rolling past his hiding spot, and a flare of biotic power sent the explosives careening into the air, where they burst into clouds of lethal shrapnel.

It was impossible for him to hold them off. There were alleyways and side streets that could easily be used to avoid Shepard's intersection entirely, and considering how many raiders there seemed to be, it was sensible for them to tie him down in a firefight and send the rest of their number to complete their objective.

As Shepard danced with his enemies in the street, trading bullets and grenades, he came to a decision. Sweat-soaked and sporting a few minor scrapes and bruises, Shepard ducked into an alley between a tall four-story office building and a quaint little diner.

Fortifying himself with a breath, Shepard reached within himself and hauled every last ounce of energy he could muster to the surface of his skin. The air around him seemed to boil and hiss as power coursed across his skin, permeating his armor and coalescing into a solid corona. Shepard was not the strongest Human biotic, in fact he was average when it came to Humans and little more than a child to Asari, but for a moment it felt like he had the power of an ancient Asari matriarch at his fingertips.

Shepard surged forward and crushed through the wall of the office building, scattering wood, metal, and stone. The interior was deserted, thank God, and Shepard gave it a cursory once-over before clipping his rifle to his back and bringing his hands up.

He threw everything he had at the wall facing the street. A ball of biotic fire surged down his shoulders and blasted from his palms, throwing him back a half-step. For a moment, Shepard himself was stunned by his own strength as the meter-wide sphere of pure energy collided with the wall and blew the whole thing into the street. Glass shattered explosively, and the building groaned as a load-bearing wall was suddenly torn out from below four stories of glass and metal.

Shepard sagged for a moment and gasped for breath, but the aura which flared around him was only slightly diminished. He cast another wave of power and another section of wall ten meters wide was destroyed completely, scattering the building across the street and filling the air with dust.

The ceiling near the street sagged and Shepard immediately reigned in his power, forming a formidable barrier around himself as he slipped from the trashed interior of the office into the alleyway. He watched with satisfaction as the building buckled and pitched over, into the street, crushing any pirates unfortunate enough to have walked into its path. The ground heaved under his feet, and for a moment Shepard wondered if there had been any civilians hiding in the upper floors of the building.

Silence settled around the immediate area. It lasted for only a few short seconds before the raiders began combing through the alleyways, searching for another way through.

Shepard stalked the streets, hunting them down. The largest contingent of raiders, a group of fifty or sixty, had turned down a side street and were heading several blocks west, to another thoroughfare. John was mostly unfamiliar with the area, but he remembered passing that street during his earlier retreat, and it only took him a few short minutes to reach it. By the time he arrived, the Batarians were already marching by.

He hit the middle of their procession like a battering ram. Bursting from an alley between what must have been a corner store and a line of townhouses, Shepard opened up on the raiders with a biotic pulse that staggered anyone within twenty meters.

As he rushed into their midst, Shepard accepted the fact that he was probably going to die. The Batarians were surprised at the suddenness and the ferocity of his assault, and those in the immediate vicinity were cut down by the bullets spitting from John's weapon. It took about a second of fully automatic fire to put them down, which was a ridiculously poor time to kill. If Shepard had been using his own Tsunami M9 they would have been torn apart like paper targets.

Once they began to shoot at the blue specter dancing in their midst, friendly fire proved more dangerous than Shepard's puny Lancer.

John had to admire their reaction time. The instant he emerged anyone who hadn't been stunned had taken cover behind parked cars or garbage cans. The ones staggering from the force of his biotic fury died in the ensuing melee, and Shepard knew that he couldn't stay out in the open and hope to survive. He pressed the barrel of his rifle against the visor of a pirate struggling to regain his feet and put three rounds in his skull. Then he slipped into the shadows of another alley.

It was tight space, filled with garbage cans from the adjoining houses, and it ended with a tall chain link fence. Shepard barely paused upon seeing the obstruction, turning to his left and blowing out a window. He hoisted himself into the house and barely spared a glance for the pristine white carpet or the archaic wooden furniture before he was dropping through another window into a different alley, followed by the screams of terrified civilians.

Circling back, Shepard burst into the street with his gun blazing. He wasn't the only one either.

Militiamen had turned onto the street from the west end, and there were fire teams materializing on rooftops or from alleyways in a similar manner to Shepard himself. Barely allowing himself to feel relieved, Shepard joined the sudden assault.

The Batarians seemed to recognize their predicament and immediately tried to retreat. Most of them were mowed down in the crossfire, others were blown apart as grenades tumbled into the street, and those unfortunate enough to be close to Shepard were run down as they ducked into houses or cowered behind bullet-riddled cars.

For an instant Shepard didn't allow himself to believe that he had won. His entire body throbbed with sudden fatigue, and he walked through the war-torn street poking at the various raider corpses. Gunshots rang out periodically as the militia swept through the nearby city blocks, ferreting out any stragglers.

Eventually Shepard came across a militiaman who seemed to be giving orders. He waited until the man finished speaking into his radio—the radios were working again?—before introducing himself.

"Lieutenant John Shepard, Alliance N7. Anything I can do?"

The hard-faced man took one look at him and shook his head. "You held the intersection of tenth and Main? Where's the rest of your platoon?"

John shook his head.

"Damn," the man muttered. "We saw that building go down. The raiders were pulling out when we came to lend a hand. Figure the battle is over by now."

Shepard glanced at the orange horizon, where flames were still stretching up to kiss the sky, and knew that a different sort of battle was about to begin.


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The eyes of the other soldiers landed heavily upon him, and his fur stood on end for a moment, rippling like a wave across his shoulders and down his back. His tail, long and whip-like, snapped violently and his glowing eyes narrowed, but he stepped forward, towards the instructor that sneered at him. Amos towered above the smaller, older male, but he was the one that was afraid. He knew the power that the instructor held over him, the weight of office and the authority that he held. He waited for the punishment to come, broadening his stance in anticipation of a beating.

But this time was different. "Where is your passion, Amos?" the instructor barked. "Where is your fire?"

He stayed silent. There was no right answer.

"Theor, fight him," the instructor ordered, and at once the other trainee stepped out from the line.

Amos sighed and settled into a familiar combat stance. Unarmed combat was one of the more interesting things that he had learned throughout his training. It came down to a contest of strength, and Amos found those to be more easily predictable than the mayhem of an actual battle. With projectiles whizzing everywhere and combatants lurking behind every obstacle, it was easy to be taken by surprise in the field. One on one, with your opponent armed only with his own arms and legs, there were fewer things to consider.

Theor was large, but not as large as Amos. The gray-furred Surrassi was only slightly shorter than Amos, but he was not nearly as broad. His weight was mostly the result of his ridiculously stocky build. His chest was built like a barrel, and the rest of him was equally thick.

He was strong, but not as strong as Amos. Amos may not have been as bulky or as solidly built, but he had a lithe, powerful stature, and his arms were longer. Amos knew that he could win the fight easily if he exerted himself, but considering the conditions of the drill he figured it might be easier to conserve his energy as much as possible.

Theor was older than Amos. At seventeen, he had been training for two years, while Amos had only spent one year of his mandatory service at Fort Whiptail. But Theor fought with a savagery and wildness that belied his supposed skill. Battle and blood inspired a kind of feverish devotion from the shorter male, an almost religious fervor, something fanatical. The instructor knew this. It was why Theor had been chosen.

They engaged at range, trading short jabs to begin. Their strikes were pulled as much to protect their own knuckles as to save each other some serious bruises. Quickly, however, it became tiresome to remain at range, and Amos closed to distance swiftly, locking Theor into a clinch. Immediately their techniques shifted to swift elbow and knee strikes even as they grappled for advantage, and Theor's blood began to heat. Their close proximity seemed to incense the smaller male, snarling and gnashing his teeth as they staggered about within the circle. Amos was silent save for the quiet grunts signifying his exertions, and this seemed to infuriate Theor more than if he had returned his own challenging growl. The sound of deep, menacing growling was beginning to draw the attention of other recruits and instructors, who had been performing some simple technique drills.

"Amos!" the instructor barked, but the soldier did not hesitate, continuing to fight. The instructor's roaring voice was like a backdrop, like nothing, but it frustrated him still. "Stop thinking, stop playing. Fight!"

Theor surged against Amos, driving a knee into the taller Surrassi's side, but Amos simply returned with a deft elbow strike to the face, stunning the gray Surrassi and interrupting his snarl. Amos shifted his footwork and Theor's grip on his arms. Finally, he responded with a growl just as Theor realized the danger he was in. With a swift turn of his hips, Theor was lifted from his feet and slammed into the mat with such force that the ring of soldiers stepped back. Immediately Amos bore down on him like an avalanche of fur, but his goal was not to hold the smaller, stockier Surrassi on the ground. He merely delivered several punishing strikes to the torso and shoulders before dancing away as Theor swung his arms, falling to his hands and knees when he missed.

"Get up!" Reoric bellowed, a growl in his voice. "When you get knocked down, get up! Don't sit there and let your enemy punish you!"

Theor rose to his feet and they engaged again. Amos saw the uncertainty in the smaller male's eyes now and knew that his confidence was shattered, and with it his unthinking fury. The snarling and growling continued, but it was a matter of pride, and there was no real force in them, just as there was no heart in his blows

"Travik, you're in," Reoric ordered the next time Amos and Theor parted. At once Amos turned towards the black furred Surrassi who stepped forward. He was only just larger than Theor, but his build was more like Amos'. Amos saw at once that Reoric was saving the largest, most dangerous opponent for when he was exhausted.

Travik did not give Amos much time to consider his strategy. At once he came forward, using his fists. Surrassi only used a closed fist in training, preferring splayed claws in actual combat, but the motions for most strikes were similar if not identical, and they could not very well use their claws in training. Some recruits had to survive to constitute an army.

Travik was known for sneaking in strikes with his claws. And he was a bloodthirsty bastard, incenced by the smell and taste.

Amos was an adequate boxer, but he was more adept at grappling in a clinch. Travik appeared happy to keep Amos at range and harass him. It was impossible for a defender to anticipate every move, and inevitably Amos suffered some serious blows to the head and torso, especially when Travik started kicking. At some point he had begun to bleed, and Amos saw the other male's emerald eyes blaze and his nostrils flare. His strikes grew wider, stronger, claws just barely held away from flesh. But it only took a few seconds for Amos to spot a pattern and take advantage. The next time Travik struck, Amos swallowed the pain and absorbed the blow, seizing Travik's arm as he came in for a follow-up. He did not stop moving as they turned with Travik's momentum, and Amos brought his arm down. He remembered to relent at the very last moment, which saved Travik's arm from being broken at the elbow.

Instead, Amos ducked under Travik's defenses and wrapped his arms around the other male's chest, heaving him into the air. Travik's growled and made to bring his elbows down on Amos' shoulders, but Amos dropped too quickly for the blow to land, crushing Travik against the mats just hard enough to knock the wind from his chest and daze him. Weakly, Travik gave a token effort, a whine in his throat, but Amos subdued him swiftly with a measured blow to the nose that shot his skull against the ground, and Reoric was forced to call in the next opponent.

A male of equal size and comparable strength to Amos, Yugan was an imposing Surrassi with dark tan fur and violet eyes. Amos got to his feet just in time to take Yugan's charge. It appeared that he had gotten excited watching Amos fight, and was looking for a chance to test his mettle.

Aching and sore from the first two contests, Amos gave his best effort, but he knew that this would be a hard-won battle if he managed to win at all. From the look in Yugan's eyes, the other male saw this as well.

Even as Yugan roared, barked, and growled like a beast, Amos remained absolutely silent. He was the picture of discipline and skill, executing techniques that some of the recruits had never even seen before as he fended off the unrelenting assault of his fresh, hot-blooded opponent. The enthusiastic Yugan was barely pulling his punches—a few times his claws had extended accidentally—and Amos was forced to respond with similar force or risk being whittled down too quickly.

"Amos, stop thinking and start fighting! Where's your fire? That's your _blood_!" the instructor screamed.

Amos grunted as he was struck in the belly, returning with a stiff blow to the floating ribs. Yugan's arms slammed down on Amos' shoulders and they locked together like a cage of iron bars. Their legs kicked together as Amos sought for an opening to take Yugan to the ground, and their arms strained against each other as they fought for the ability to strike with a hard elbow.

"Hit him! Draw blood! Can't you smell it already?" These words seemed to wash over the anxious crowd like nothing, but to Amos they were like a brand, burning him. He had been taught...he had always been taught to remain in control, to have discipline. It was how Father had shown him to fight.

Yugan managed to twist an arm free and the hard edge of his bony elbow slammed full force against Amos' skull, just above his left eye. Amos' head snapped back, ears ringing, but he ducked the next attack and swept his leg around the back of Yugan's knee, throwing his shoulder against the center of the tanned fur of Yugan's chest. With an audible crack,Yugan toppled to the mats and Amos stepped back, swiping the skin of his forehead with his fingers. They came back glistening with blood.

"Good! Again! Harder!"

While Amos felt guilt, the sight and smell of blood energized Yugan. Despite his setback, he was on his feet and advancing once again, and Amos was stunned that Reoric allowed the fight to continue. He glanced at the scarred instructor and saw only a skeptical look on his face.

Amos turned silently back to Yugan and they traded blows once again.

It was brutal. So brutal in fact that there were several times where the others looked to Reoric as though expecting him to step in before someone broke a bone or was similarly incapacitated. Everyone could see that Yugan was only barely restraining the urge to use his claws on Amos, but Amos' features were as unreadable as ever, if tense. He weathered the storm like a great rock under the onslaught of a stormy sea. By this point there was quite a crowd gathered to watch, and the other instructors deemed this an acceptable use of their time considering the amount of skill which was being put on display.

Finally, they parted, and Amos's breath was harsh with a rumbling purr like an engine. Blood had run down Amos' face, following the line of his jaw and nose. It made him look fierce and dangerous. His crimson eyes glowed with an indecipherable heat. Yugan circled him, limping but still fresh, just warmed up. Amos was favoring his right side, his face was bloody, and he was clearly exhausted.

"Well, get on with it!" Reoric gestured animatedly, and Yugan bellowed a war-cry, rushing forward. Amos hadn't even left his combat stance. The charge staggered him, and he took a brutal strike to the ribs that left three parallel cuts, weeping crimson into his dark brown fur. Yugan howled and shoved him away, eyes rolling wild, but Reoric did not break them apart.

Instead, he encouraged them. "Come on!" Reoric barked as they circled each other like caged beasts.

Amos may have been favoring his bruised side as they circled, but it was impossible to tell once he engaged. He moved with fluidity and grace that put Yugan to shame, and still the mountain of fur managed to force Amos to backpedal under the sheer strength of his assault. They closed into a clinch and everyone winced even before the first of many excruciating blows battered Amos' already bruised face and sides. Desperate, Amos lashed out and disengaged, wiping a dollop of blood from his eyes.

There was a heat in his blood, a tight knot in his chest. His vision had darkened at the edges, focused entirely on Yugan's face, with the spot of shining blood. Amos had never felt this way before, and his heart was pounding, his ears roaring with the blood in his veins.

They engaged again and Yugan finally managed to take Amos to the mats just by lifting him and bowling him over with unrelenting force. They crashed to the ground and he snarled viciously as he landed painfully on Amos' strategically placed knee. For a moment they scrabbled on the floor, and everyone grimaced painfully at the blows they were trading, but finally Amos was subdued.

"Get up!" Reoric barked. His face was impassive, but his eyes shone with an unreadable emotion. Everyone started and ogled at him as Amos crawled across the blood-splattered mat. "You heard me! Get up! You coward, have you no heart?!"

Yugan was stalking his downed opponent, just waiting for him to stand, but Amos had to haul his sorry frame up bit by bit, first rising shakily to a knee and then to his feet, pivoting to face the other male, eyes shining the color of his blood.

"Again!"

They engaged once more. Yugan's growl vibrated through Amos' arms and into his chest as they grappled, forgoing boxing entirely. Amos struggled uselessly and was practically tossed around the mats for a handful of long, excruciating seconds. He knew that if this continued he was going to be seriously injured.

Amos pictured himself in the place of the male who had challenged him, rising triumphantly above his opponent despite his battered frame and bloodied face.

Yugan closed with him again and his arm crashed into Amos' nose, putting stars in his eyes and rattling his skull. Suddenly, Amos bellowed with indignation, felt the pressure release in his gut, and the sound was so great and terrible that even Yugan, in his blood-craze, hesitated. Everyone jumped in their skin, unable to tear their eyes away as the usually phlegmatic Amos became implacable. His growl was deep and thunderous, louder than Yugan's despite their size difference, and when they finally began to move again it was like a completely new combatant had entered the fray.

Amos had shaken the fatigue from his body as he ducked Yugan's arms and stepped back, landing a hook on his enemy's jaw which resounded throughout the room with a _crack._ His fist ached, but the expression on Yugan's face was worth it. Before the larger male could respond, Amos shot his foot into his gut with the force of a cannon, knocking him back a step. He settled into his most comfortable stance and stalked forward again, engaging on his own terms for the first time in many minutes.

When Yugan regained his breath he roared and met Amos halfway, expecting the same resistance that he had received when he had taken Amos to the ground. Instead he found himself disoriented as Amos pulled him close enthusiastically, using their proximity to punish the larger male with ferocious blows to his ribs. His knees were unforgiving as they drove the air from Yugan's lungs, and the claws that dug into his shoulders refused to give him enough space to recover. Eventually, their arms were tangled together and Yugan was certain he could manage an elbow strike.

The moment he tried, Amos half disengaged and ducked the blow, catching Yugan's wrist and pulling him down with a savage snap of his upper body. His teeth bared as thoguh he would bite, but they snapped on air, just short. Bent at the waist, Amos forced the position by grabbing the back of Yugan's neck with one wide palm, crushing the tendons of his spine mercilessly and coating his claws with rich arterial blood. They snarled as their heads cracked painfully together, but Amos refused to relent.

"That's enough!" the instructor's voice was like an echo across a great distance, soundless.

Amos felt as though he was watching himself fight in third person. He yanked on the arm in his grasp, swept his leg to the right. Yugan surged forward in an attempt to unbalance his opponent, but Amos flowed to the side like a passing breeze, using his enemy's weight to straighten out his arm. Then his palm shot down like the bullet from a gun and crunched through the bones of the joint with a sickening _crack._ The huge male's entire body shook with the force of the once a gasp rose up from the spectators as Yugan barked a harsh scream of pain and fell to his knees.

Amos followed through, dropping the mangled arm and knocking Uhor onto his back with a bone-shattering kick to the chest. The craze had fled from the other male's eyes, and he whimpered, cradling his arm, scooting away. Standing above the larger male, Amos growled dangerously and glared into the fallen recruit's eyes, sweeping down with teeth bared.

"Stand down!" Reoric barked, already rushing forward, shoving Amos aside. Amos came back to himself just before he struck back, and suddenly he felt the weight of a hundred eyes upon him. His growl subsided into silence and the pain of his injuries returned in full force. He swayed, and only barely kept his feet, but he refused to make a sound. Reoric knelt beside the fallen soldier and swore. "Get these fools to the infirmary," he snapped to no one in particular.

Somehow, Amos felt worse now than he would have if he had simply lost the fight.

* * *

 _Son, there will come a time when you don't see any reason to keep on living, when all the things you've ever desired fall short of your capacity for longing, when your dreams crumble to dust before you, when all the world seems to be full of sickness, death, and evil, pathetic creatures of dust._

 _When it comes, don't give up your life. Take another step. One foot before the other, however that looks. Believe. Have faith in your heritage._

Amos took this literally now. One foot, wrenched up, out of the snow, plunging down, hoping for purchase, stumbling forward into the gale. He could see an arm's length ahead, following the path marked by crumbling statues covered in ice. Like the old hero, Margux, he trudged up the old paths to the top of the mountain.

But this wasn't like the old stories. Nothing ever was. Margux had undertaken the journey to fulfill a prophecy, had claimed his inheritance, descending a prince when he had risen a foot soldier. The elders had given him wisdom, power, and purpose. But in this punishment, Amos doubted that he'd find anything save for death.

He didn't know what drive him on, what made him lift his feet. Maybe they were waiting for him to give up, maybe they'd let him freeze to unconsciousness and save his life, having taught him a lesson about insubordination. But he didn't think that was the case. For three years, he had fought tooth and nail against their attempts to change him, to take away the things that his father had taught him, to make him another beast on a chain. But after his fight with Yugan, he had never again let the rage take hold.

He had felt the dangerous edge in it that the others seemed to ignore or perhaps even desire.

His instructors did not like this. No matter how he excelled, they could see the light in his eyes, and knew that he was not truly given over to the fight. And despite how they tried to light flames of patriotism and desperation in him, he remained stoic. They were looking for a fanatic, and he was a knight.

So they said, "Go up to the mountain, ask the elders what is wrong with you. If you return, you'll be a soldier."

So he went. He imagined himself the Margux of the modern age, a young male reaching for destiny, ascending the hills to get closer to the stars. But this mountain was not a lush green forested hill any longer, it was a glacier, and the ice made the cliffs sheer and unscalable. It had encroached upon the territory of their ancestors, all except for the rough-hewn icy steps that led away into the driving wind.

He smelled fire on the wind and moved more quickly, despite the numbness that was creeping along his legs. The snow was so thick that he followed his nose and not his eyes, tracking the telltale scent of smoke to a hollow melted in the ice where a thin, gangly old Surrassi male was squatting beside a fire. Protected by the wind, it was eerily quiet in the cave of ice, and Amos was, for a moment, struck dumb by the weight of the silence.

"Hm, who is it?" the male wondered.

Amos growled quietly in greeting. "It is Amos, a soldier from the Fort at the foot of these mountains."

"Ah," the ancient creature stood. "Have you come to die, then?"

"What?" Amos breathed, and for a moment he wondered if even this old male would seek to challenge him like the others at the base. But no, he was only shuffling nearer to the flickering fire.

"There have been others like you, walking up the path that I have kept for these many long years. They have died, all of them."

"I am not going to die," Amos declared, and the words straightened his back. The older male only scoffed.

"They said the same. What makes you different from them, hm? Beasts, they were. And they died like beasts."

Amos bared his teeth, and that was when he realized that the old male was blind. "I am no beast."

"Is that what you think?" was the answer. "Well, let us climb the mountain then, and we will see."

Amos didn't see how climbing a mountain would reveal his nature, beast or not, but he stepped aside as the elder moved past him, into the wind. He half-expected the old bones to blow away with the force of the gale, a weight that he had been pressing against for hours, but the spindly old male took it like it was nothing, nearly disappearing into the snow before Amos caught up, hissing in distaste of the cold.

They walked, unable to speak for the howling of the wind. Step after step they went, and gradually Amos began to lose his strength. He was stunned and humiliated by the vitality in the elder male, forcing himself to keep walking even when he would have long since stopped, and it was not until they reached a spiraling section of the steps that he realized they must have been near the top.

But that was an illusion. He climbed after his guide and the wind abated as they rose beyond the clouds, suddenly far, far above the plains below, and there they stopped on a plateau. Looking up, Amos saw the stars arrayed in splendor beside the sun and the moon, all hanging like ornaments in some unfathomable tree. Beside him, the elder was staring, sightless, across the carpet of clouds that stretched as far as the eyes could see.

"You have come farther than the rest," the elder intoned. "There is hope for you, then."

"Hope?"Amos wondered, looking behind at the cliffs. Far above, the peaks of the mountains were outlined in gold by the sun, and his breath was taken away. "Master, how is it that you can walk so far?"

"I have climbed this mountain a thousand times in a thousand years," the old male replied. "It does not get harder with time. I only grow weaker."

Amos blinked. "I don't understand."

"The tasks that we face will be what they are, young Amos. And sometimes living life means you have to climb a mountain when your knees are aching and your back is creaking," was the reply. "Come, we shall see if you can reach the place of your ancestors. It is written: 'He that reaches the mount will be burdened by fate, but may the journey make him strong enough to bear his burden.'"

Again, the elder walked away, and again Amos dragged himself after. The going was much slower, much more vertical, and with every foot that they climbed Amos grew more aware of the thousands of feet he had left behind, of the drop below him. One slip, one loose stone, and he would fall into the clouds, through them, and to his death. His muscles were trembling with fear and exhaustion when they finally pulled themselves up onto a terrace and there he was met with the sight of a crumbling archway.

A skeleton was leaning against the stones. The elder sighed, a reedy sound, and his head swung to the side and back, neck bowing under a heavy weight that Amos could not see. "Here we stand. The living among the dead."

"I thought the elders would be here," Amos murmured, wary of raising his voice.

"Elders?" the male replied, facing him, strightening up. "I am the last. My name is Margux."

Amos' breath left him in a cough and he swayed. "What?" he breathed, steadying himself again lest the wind topple him down the mountain. "You lie. Margux would be thousands of years old."

"Old I may be," Margux answered. "But a liar I am not."

"The stories were false," Amos argued. "Only legends. The stars were not gods, only fire. And our ancestors have become dust."

Mardux walked to the old bones and scattered them. "Perhaps what you say is true," he whispered, his voice reaching across the terrace with the wind. "But I am alive. And when I climbed this mountain for the first time, Garganan was here, the First. And when he climbed the mountain, They were here. Creators. Was he a liar, also, or a myth?"

Amos swallowed thickly. "I...I don't know."

"Good answer," Margux hummed. "Yes, that was a good answer. All this talk of stars and ancestors...it goes to show that we really don't know, doesn't it? So why did you climb the mountain with me? Did you wish to fulfill a prohpecy?"

"What prophecy could I fulfill? My people have forsaken the old ways," Amos replied. "I have forsaken them."

Margux snorted. "Forsaken them, you say, but here at the peak you have risen. The others succumbed to doubt and fear and primal instinct, they withered away in the snow. And the strongest of them faltered in the climb and fell away to nothing. But you persevered through numbness and terror. You have dominion over your emotions, they do not master you. That is the Old Ways. Discipline was the heart of all our wisdom."

"So what?" Amos snorted. "Because I managed to climb a mountian without freezing or falling, I'm fated or something?"

"You can have the fate that you are willing to carve out in this world," Margux replied. "When I climbed this mountain, they gave me a direction, crowned me a king. But that did not make me king. Leading my men, pulling a kingdom from the dust, laying brick upon brick and stone upon stone with my family, and defending that land against savages. These things made me a king. So, I could tell you a prophecy, the one that you have fulfilled. But you are the one that would fulfill it, or let it die."

"How could they have passed away?" Amos wondered, looking at the bones. "All of them but you?"

"I was the youngest. The last to climb the mountain fully, to claim a Fate," was the reply. "And I am dying, to, like my people are dying. See how they fight and squabble, like the beasts that they are? Well, I did my best."

Amos swallowed thickly. "What is the prophecy?"

Margux was silent for a long time, staring out across the clouds, but when he spoke it was with power that resonated in Amos' mind, a voice of its own, cementing the words in his memory.

"When the light of the stars becomes pale and the sun's warmth cold,

When the moon glows bright and the eyes of the people burn,

When nations crumble and kings are born and die in a breath,

When the last of the elders passes into the Beyond,

Then a soldier will stand upon the graves of his ancestors and take upon himself the mantle that they had let falter,

You will be the spear of the shepherd and the shield that stands against extinction."

Amos mulled over this in silence. "How long has this prophecy been known?'

"I have given it to you," was the soft reply. "Or did you expect us to have predicted the future. Ha! I am sure that Gardanan could have done it, but not I. I was always weak compared to him. What foresight I have, I have given you with those words."

Amos frowned. "The prophecy has been broken already. You are not dead. I am not a soldier."

"Go up on the mountain and ask what is wrong with you," Margux quoted. "To answer them, there is nothing wrong with you. But you are what they _should be,_ and this baffles them. And then, 'If you come back, come a soldier or not at all?' Well, I am a King. I think I have the authority to Knight you, still."

"You are not dead," Amos repeated, latching onto the last part of the prophecy that would make it untrue.

"I am dying, I said," Margux waved his hand. "Only hours remain for me. But I am glad to have met you, Amos, before going to meet my ancestors. There is hope for our people, still, if there is one like you among them. You have risen above instinct, conquered the madness that lurks in us all. Perhaps you are the only one of this faithless generation that has done so."

Amos shuddered and moved closer to the elder. In the cold, he could see that Margux was shivering, shaking. It shocked him deeply that someone with enough strength to climb the mountain could be dying.

"How did you climb up the mountain, Margux?" he asked again, drawing up close and bringing the elder to his arms.

The old king snorted, but accepted the warmth. "I already told you. The mountain doesn't get harder to climb. You'll remember that, as you face your troubles. I know it."

"It is said that it was green and warm in your days, O King," Amos murmured.

"It was also said that the stars above were gods alive," Margux reminded him.

Amos whined deep in his throat and felt an ache, the same that he had felt when his Father had told him of the Old Ways when he was still young. An ache for grandeur, a yearning for eternity, perpetually frustrated. "So the gods are dead, then?"

"They are there, my son, the last Knight of my waning kingdom. But you have to find them, I think. And if they have died, then perhaps they have only made a place for us to take?"

Amos nodded carefully and stayed where he stood until the breath left Margux at last, and then he laid the body down beside the other elders. He looked across the crumbling citadel, across the bones of legends. Then he turned and began the long descent.

Words echoed in his head for the entire walk, in the voice of his elder. _Go, my knight. Seize your prophecy._

It was the next day when he stumbled through the gates of the Fort and was met by his instructor, who hauled him to his feet and glared at his face. "Did you climb the mount?"

"I did," Amos replied. "And I am a Knight."

The instructor spat at his feet. "Who ever heard of a knight in these recent centuries?" he wondered. "Well, it is no matter. You are a soldier of our King now, knight or no. What say you?"

"Aye," Amos answered.


	5. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

It was only a short six months later that things took a dire turn, and Amos felt rather sick at the sense of relief and anticipation that he felt when the news came.

War had broken out between Xixisax and Tyre.

Before the Kingdom, before the Calamity, the nations of Xixisax had delved deep into the sciences of the Void, and they had devised clever vessels which could carry passengers through the abyss. The first place that they visited was Tyre, the fifth planet of their local solar system, because it had familiar gravitational forces. They found it a lifeless husk, a windblown desert bereft of life, but through a hundred years of toil they transformed it into the newest frontier. It was a new and beautiful world. When the Calamity struck, chaos destroyed much, but the fledgling Kingdom had worked to preserve whatever knowledge they could find, and they had saved Tyre from utter destruction. In the place of a hundred distinct sovereigns there was only the Kingdom and the colony. Not everyone was exactly welcoming of this fact.

Amos wasn't privy to detailed information as a garrison of the fort at the foot of the mountain, but he heard enough to get a vague idea of the happenings at the capitol.

The war began as nothing more than the discomfiture of the colonists. The nobles on Xixisax were taking advantage of the distance between Tyre and the capitol to extort raw materials from the colony, and the colonists were tired of it. Amos could understand their complaint. He felt that he worked for nothing and was uncompensated for his arduous labor as well, but he never said so out loud. To speak out of turn would incur the wrath of his superiors, and to say _those_ words would mean death or worse: exile. No. It was better to keep such things to oneself. But the colonists apparently did not think so.

What began as a protest quickly escalated into a full blown rebellion.

So, Amos ended up on board a Void-ship designed for troop transportation, dressed in the same armor as twelve million other nameless, faceless souls. The first wave of the assault consisted of only several hundred thousand soldiers, the elite glider divisions of the King's army, packed like chattel into six hundred Void-ships from the King's navy.

There had been no wars since the Calamity, but the long years of constant tumult had been enough to perfect the Kingdom's martial traditions. Every soldier had been carefully outfitted with a full suit of armor, complete with its own air supply and hydraulic enhancement system. These suits of armor could withstand the vacuum of the Void for several hours, and on the surface of a planet they enabled warriors to carry many times their body weight without sacrificing speed. For the gliders they were also fitted with retractable wings.

And they would need the extra carrying capacity once they were planet-side. Every warrior hefted a backpack containing a two-liter water canteen, five days of food rations, a bladed shovel, and a square of plastic explosives. They wore a belt strapped with an automatic handgun, four extra magazines, three grenades, and two combat knives. Across their chests were strapped long cylindrical power cells for their spears, which they held in their dominant hand or clipped to the back of their shield. The long, redoubtable spear was efficient in close combat, but its true lethality was in the machinery just below the spearpoint. It was a potent ranged weapon as well, capable of striking a target with a deadly burst of plasma. In their offhand every soldier carried an oblong, body-length shield capable of withstanding most firearms save for large caliber armor piercing, LCAP, rounds.

Some of them carried heavy weaponry, machine-guns or mortars, and yet others toted collapsible barriers designed for reinforcing key positions on the battlefield.

Amos, as a simple glider, was equipped with the standard rucksack and armaments. He was pressed tightly among a pack of fellow soldiers in the cramped cargo bay of a Void-ship. At first his stomach had rebelled to the sensation of Void travel, but he had gotten used to it during the first several days of the journey. It was impossible to get comfortable; space was extremely limited and after a few short hours the soldiers were laying all over one another and trying to ignore the heat of the claustrophobic hold as much as possible. The Surrassi were a physically affectionate species and usually had no compunctions about being very near to one another, but these were cramped conditions even by their standards. The cargo bay was beginning to stink something fierce by the time they arrived, and Amos found himself in the unlikely position of actually looking forward to a drop from high altitude into contested territory. If only to avoid the stench of unwashed bodies. He knew that they were currently several kilometers above Tyre because the ship had gotten much quieter and the atmosphere of tension had become stifling; the engines were idling. The only other sound besides the engine was the clacking of metal armor as soldier picked themselves up and stood fidgeting before the closed hangar doors.

"All hands, prepare for drop."

Those words rippled through the shoulders of the assembled soldiers, the elite specimens of the King's army, and they stood with stiff backs, breathing shallowly in the dim hold of the Void-ship. Only the most skilled recruits were chosen for the training required to perform a successful glider drop. When the hold doors suddenly yawned open the wind began to crack and snap in the air around them they pressed together like pigs in a chute. Battering against one another with rattling armor, they awaited the inevitable command. A few of the soldiers nearest the doors were nearly jostled straight out into the air, but they held on by the tips of their fingers.

Amos thought at this moment that it had been a long time since he had sent a letter to his father.

The sounds of the world was oddly muffled by the sealed armor that they wore, but they still heard the voice as it spoke over the announcement speakers, ordering them with resolute calm to their deaths.

"Drop."

The whole mass of them suddenly vomited from the back of the Void-ship in a cloud as thick as bees pouring from their hive. Amos held tightly to his spear as he was pushed from the gaping hold along with the rest of his company. They slowly began to spread out from one another under the cold sun, now wan and pale compared to the harsh warmth of Xixisax. The air roared in his ears despite his full helm, and he saw darkly armored soldiers falling below him and on all sides. Some were directly above; some were pressing close to him on either side. Like hard dollops of hail, they fell from the cloudless sky, and the ground below them erupted like the mirror-calm surface of a lake during a storm when it is first struck by the rain. The flash of gun emplacements was the only warning they received before the air around them suddenly exploded in hot white light. All sound faded to nothing when the first flak round exploded a few meters to Amos' left, sending him caterwauling through the air. His shield was torn from his grip, and suddenly the clear skies were painted red with a bloody mist of pulverized flesh.

As the unforgiving ground rose to meet them, the armor that the falling warriors wore detected their altitude and set itself into motion. During high altitude drops like this one, their specialized armor would extend a magnificent pair of metal wings, allowing the gliders to perform their function. The idea was that they could hit the ground whilst running, thereby allowing them a relatively safe landing. Gliding through clouds of flak artillery fire proved to be more difficult than it had been in the controlled conditions of jump training, however, and Amos only just managed to keep himself steady. Around him, he saw his brethren spinning in corkscrews or flailing uncontrollably, and they hit the ground hard, digging deep furrows in the dry earth. Some were torn apart on impact, and others struck with enough force that they sunk into a crater and laid motionless with their smoking armor strewn about them.

The infantry had a harder time than the armored divisions. The largest transports were carrying huge war machines and these were pushed out after the first glider divisions began their descent. It was nearly impossible to damage these machines with mere flak cannons, and they were almost certainly unharmed by the time they reached the surface.

The sound of the guns was distant now, as though it was coming from a long distance away, although Amos could see them firing into the sky from no more than a hundred meters away. Kicking his legs forward, Amos swung into an upright position and alighted heavily. He pumped his legs, and was carried forward by his considerable weight. Before he could slow himself, another warrior crashed into the ground ten meters before him, and Amos tripped over himself as he swerved away. His head bounced in the dirt and his arms were wrenched terribly as he rolled, crushing his considerable wings beneath him and dragging his fingers hopelessly through the coarse grass. His pack tore open and its contents flew into the air, but the things secured on his belt stayed where they were. His spear and shield, however, had been lost during his descent.

Dazed, he laid where he was, staring at the sky. A swarm of Void-ships were hanging far, far above, little more than white flecks of snow or wisps of cloud. Amos saw a great host of warriors dropping from the red skies, along with dollops of gore and various implements of war. Black smoke marked the places where the flak canisters had burst amid the attackers, and white lines marked the trajectory of tracer rounds. Machine-guns were spewing countless bullets into the air, but the sound of their discharge was oddly muffled.

Amos felt as though his head was submerged in a pool of water. The only thing that motivated him to roll his shoulders and haul himself to his feet was a thousand hours of drills. He cast about and found a spear lying several meters to his side, beside a shield which had buried itself in the dirt. The original owner must have been killed as he fell, and since Amos did not see anyone coming to retrieve them he claimed them for himself. First, he had to pry the severed arm from the handle.

The defenders had sallied into the fields to protect their gun emplacements from the glider troopers. With nothing to obscure his vision save for the smoke, Amos could see for hundreds of meters in every direction, and he spotted the enemy sweeping across the plains in fast-moving vehicles, pouring bullets and plasma at anything that dared to move. Amos hefted his spear, but before he could go to the aid of his fellows he was suddenly under assault by yet another roving band of well-armed rebels. He turned just in time to catch a burst of gunfire on his wide shield, and the force of the sustained fire forced him to take a step back.

They were still using small caliber firearms without much success. Amos figured that the colony must not have had the resources to outfit all of their forces with LCAP weaponry.

There were other warriors who had made a successful landing, and they engaged the mechanized infantrymen along with Amos. While he was under fire, Amos was forced to widen his stance and put his entire body behind the oblong shield that he held before him. Despite the ineffectual firearms, he did not want to risk a blind charge. His armor assisted him in keeping him in place under continuous machine-gun fire, but he could not make any forward progress. Neither could he move out of the line of fire, for there was no place nearby that would protect him. He could only hope that they did not have time to take aim with whatever LCAP weaponry they had at their disposal. While they focused their fire on him, his allies were free to advance. This forced the defenders to shift their focus periodically, suppressing as many attackers as they could while they brought armor piercing weaponry to bear.

When the hail of bullets let up Amos ran towards the vehicle at an oblique, hoping to force anyone targeting him with a large, unwieldy rifle to shift their aim. He had taken three steps when he was stalled once more. This time there must have been multiple guns, because his shield nearly rattled itself to pieces in his grip and he was hard pressed to keep his footing. Still, it eventually abated, and Amos risked a peek around the rim of his shield.

He was close to the vehicle now, which had been forced to a halt by a well-placed grenade. The left track was blown to bits. Rebel infantry cowered behind the vehicle, and the guns along its spine were still breathing fire, but there were more and more gliders touching down with every passing moment, and the enemy was soon surrounded.

Amos closed the remaining distance, within the minimum range of the machine-guns, and he pressed himself against the tracks. There were slits in the vehicles armor for its occupants to fire through, but Amos stayed carefully away from them. He saw three of his comrades get blown apart by LCAP rounds from the vehicle's interior, but there was no way for him to damage the armored transport. Instead, he ducked under the windows and swung around the front to confront the rebels who were hunkered down beside the entrance hatch. Plasma from staff weapons was more effective against shields than projectiles, and there were many men from the initial assault that laid dead in the field around the vehicle because of these defenders. Somehow, they had armed themselves with the spears that the attackers were wielding.

There were three of them, and they turned on Amos the moment that they saw him. There was no time for conscious thought as Amos charged forward, bowling over the foremost defender with his shield and thrusting his spear towards the second in a mighty charge. Even as the barb of his weapon pierced the chest of the second rebel, the third leveled his weapon and its shaft began to glow an ominous red. Pulling his weapon free with a sickening squelch, Amos slammed his shield down in front of him just in time for plasma to splash across is surface, heating it to the point where he was forced to relinquish his grip upon it. Kicking the shield forward, Amos advanced over the defender whom he had knocked flat, crushing his helm and skull beneath his boots as he went. The final infantryman lunged forward in a final bid for victory, but Amos turned his spear aside and cracked the visor of the rebel' helm with a closed fist. Amos swung his heavy spear and caught the back of Defender Three's legs, which sent him tumbling to the dirt.

For a moment, Amos stared down at the other Surrassi, listening to the muted sounds of battle. When he saw Defender Three reach for his sidearm he drove his spear through the breastplate and heart of his enemy and held it there for several seconds, watching him in the throes of death. He kicked the spear from his opponent's weakening grasp and turned his attention to the vehicle. The door was partly ajar, but the crew inside must not have heard their comrades die. No one came out to fight him. Amos threw a grenade inside and pulled the door shut. When the transport jumped in place, he kicked the hatch open again and stormed inside, only to find a rebel laying on the metal floor with his legs severed gruesomely from his torso. His guts trailed behind him as he reached out towards the sunlight, toward Amos, and he was rewarded with a hard spike driven through his helm and into his forehead. The other gunners were slumped in their seats, and for a moment blissful silence reigned.

Amos stepped out of the vehicle, into the cacophony of the battle, and saw several friendly uniforms gathered near the corpses of the fallen rebels. "Damn," one of the males swore, casting his eyes about the carnage. The grass was soaked with blood and littered with the broken bodies of the gliders. Still, like angels who had been cast down to Hell, the invaders continued to fall in droves, but it seemed like very few survived to fight on the ground.

In the chaos it was difficult to tell who was winning.

Of the gathered soldiers, there was one who had more years of experience than anyone else. His armor was marked to indicate the number of years he had served, and it indicated almost fifty-seven. He took charge, "Our primary objective is to pacify the surface to air defenses. Intelligence has uploaded the locations of the nearest targets to your heads-up display. Work together and remember your training. Leave no survivors; this is a battlefield not a city."

Amos' helm was damaged and did not display the objective. He chose a warrior at random and resolved that this would be the one that he would stay close to during this battle. Casting about, Amos found himself another shield, one that was only slightly damaged by gunfire, and the motley collection of gliders set off at a jog. They could see the nearest flak gun, for it had not once stopped firing since the battle had begun.

"Shit, you look like you took a hard fall," the warrior that Amos had chosen to follow remarked when they fell in together. Looking down at himself, Amos realized he was coated with a glistening sheen of blood.

So much. Suddenly he could see it dripping from his armor. He felt it seeping through the hard plates and into his skin. Amos could taste it on his tongue and smell its biting metallic tang in the air. It pervaded every sense so much that he could hear his very own blood pounding in his ears with every heartbeat.

"Hey! Keep up, will you?" the warrior barked from a few steps ahead. He hesitated to allow Amos to regain his pace.

The flak gun was surrounded by machine-guns and a platoon of infantrymen. They were set upon by at least fifty gliders, but they had an entrenched position, and the assault was not going well.

"Grenade!" someone barked, and suddenly everyone was throwing themselves into the dirt. Bullets hissed through the air above them. The ground shook, someone screamed, hot smoke rolled across the grass. Amos lurched forward, pulled his second-to-last grenade from his belt and lobbed it towards the machine-guns, along with at least four of his fellows. The defenders threw some of them back, pausing on the triggers of their guns, but one of them must have been missed because the lull in gunfire stretched on long enough for Amos and his cohort to finish their advance.

The warrior that Amos had been following was hit in the right side of his chest by a plasma burst. His armor, for all of its advanced technology, did nothing to protect him from that. He dropped to the ground with his suit of expensive metal scrap rattling around his bones, and Amos suddenly felt lost. He was forced to join the melee, however, as the defenders surged forward in an attempt to break out of the quickly tightening noose. Two of the rebels charged into Amos as he reached the guns, and he stumbled backwards, only just in time to avoid the point of a spear as it scratched across the breastplate of his armor. Turning, he batted aside an incoming thrust with his shield and put his own spearpoint through the thigh of the nearest rebel. The other, blocked by the wide shield, attempted to circle, but Amos only pushed on, throwing his maimed opponent to the ground.

He only just had time to crush the fallen warrior's breastplate into his ribcage before the second defender took aim with his spear and fired a lance of plasma which might have turned Amos into a pillar of charcoal if he had not tripped in the process of finishing his fallen opponent. He hit the ground and rolled onto the dying defender, swinging his spear into the air just in time to catch the charging Surrassi on its tip like a boar who had burst from the undergrowth. With his entire weight behind his charge, the rebel's armor crunched and gave way, allowing the spear to pierce muscle, bone, and vital organs as it passed completely through his chest and out the back of his armor. His spear still drove forward, but Amos batted it aside and raised his boot, kicking the dying Surrassi away along with the spear which remained lodged in his chest.

Around him, people were dying, screaming, and trampling over the bodies of those who had already fallen. The ground was turning to mud under their boots. Amos, now weaponless, did not dare to stand and present himself as a target. The hands of the warrior below him were scrabbling across the hard metal skeleton of Amos' armor, and Amos struggled to turn over and subdue the enemy, but he could not find his feet. Finally, the arms which bound him loosened and he quickly scrambled to a kneeling position. Looking down, Amos met the eyes of the man that he had killed, for he had not been wearing a full suit of armor.

The rebel's expression was forever frozen in an odd mix between a pained grimace and a desperate gasp; his ribs and armor would have crunched into his lungs, making it extremely painful to breathe. His lungs would have flooded with blood, and his heart would have been similarly lacerated or crushed. Amos was frozen atop the corpse, unable to do so much as turn his eyes away from the paralyzed features of the dead warrior. His eyes were dim and lifeless and blood ran in thick rivulets from the corner of his lips. He looked young and terrified.

Amos felt a crushing weight on his chest and wondered if that was anything like what this poor creature had suffered in his final moments. He gasped and finally averted his eyes, unable to bear the sight even for a single moment longer, but still the feeling did not abate. Something cold and ugly had wrapped its long fingers around his heart, and he could feel it squeezing tighter with every passing moment. Trembling, Amos stood up and gazed through the blood-red fog. He saw an endless sea of dead men.

The dead were falling from the sky. They walked across the grass, fought beneath the raining blood, and Amos imagined all of them lying on the ground with faces frozen in the same horrid expression of agony. All around him he saw people running, jumping, fighting, and dying. He saw them bursting into a thousand pieces as grenades exploded and large caliber rounds made mince-meat of once proud soldiers. He saw them bursting into flames. He saw them stepping onto landmines and flying twenty meters into the air. He saw them hitting the ground like stones.

He could not think. He could not breathe.

Amos staggered into the middle of the field. He cast about aimlessly, stumbling like a drunk, but no one paid him any mind. He was invisible to them. Shouting soldiers ran past him, knocking him to the ground. Every time he fell he stood back up and kept walking even though he did not know where he was going. Eventually Amos felt something strike him in the back, tossing him to the ground one final time. As pain began to swallow his awareness he prayed that his father would survive the news of his passing. Then he was gone.


	6. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Lord Branka stood surrounded by bright view-screens, all of which filled with various images or dense tables of data. This was the observation deck of his flagship, the _Terenum._ She wasa battle-carrier almost as massive as one of the Hegemony's dreadnought-class warships, although they served different purposes in battle. Normally, such a vessel was prohibited by the treaties that the Hegemony had signed with the Citadel Council.

The pesky Treaties of Farixen limited the number of dreadnoughts in the forces under the employ of the entity that signed the treaty. The Hegemony had signed in its capacity as a government, and therefore limited the number of dreadnoughts—and other similarly sized vessels—that it could legally construct to a fraction of the Turian military's current force. But, the private armies of the nobility were not similarly limited as they had not signed the treaty themselves. So far, the distinction had not been investigated by the Council, but eventually they would find that the Batarian race as a whole had built many more dreadnought-sized vessels than the Treaties of Farixen would have otherwise allowed. The Alliance had pulled a similar trick by declaring many of their colonies to be independent nation-states in a mutual defense pact, but after the Relay 314 Incident the Council paid closer attention to the Alliance . They were still trying to get each individual Human colony to sign the Treaties.

However, even with a hundred separate signatures, the Alliance had the benefit of many more warships than they would have been allowed as a single entity. Not as many as the Hegemony. But it was a legal maneuver worthy of some respect, and it would have been completely successful if the Council had not been peculiarly interested in Human politics as of late.

Behind the _Terenum_ , shrouded in the darkness of space, a substantial fleet had been assembled. A thousand vessels, consisting mostly of armed troop transports and their various escorts, awaited the signal from the observatory. They were crewed by a force of three hundred thousand soldiers.

Lord Branka had already claimed the system as part of the Hegemony, submitting its name to the Council and the other nobles along with a report on its mineral wealth and other assets. He had omitted the presence of the natives, of course, but claiming it as a part of his estate would make it substantially more difficult for the Council to claim that its current inhabitants had any right to the territory. Lord Branka's documents were the first to be registered with the official governments of the region, after all.

The fact that this was his territory by law also made the mobilization of his military a lot less suspicious for his immediate neighbors.

"My lord, your Guard Captain wishes to speak with you," the commanding officer of the _Terenum_ interrupted Lord Branka's musings. Turning away from the endless vistas of the stars, Lord Branka routed the communication from the bridge to the observatory. The view-screens suddenly filled with the Rutler's scarred visage.

"My lord," he greeted with an inclination of his head.

"What do you have for me?" Lord Branka asked curtly.

"There has been a significant development since your departure from Terenum Prima, my lord. We could not inform you because you were not in range of a communications buoy during your journey here," Rutler began. When he hesitated, Lord Branka sliced his hand through the air in an impatient gesture.

"Get on with it, then! If its bad news, well, we can adapt," he declared.

"The aliens have engaged in what appears to be a civil war. A large force of vessels departed from the third world in this system, the more populous world, and traveled to the fifth. There, it appears that they have engaged in sustained bombardment of the surface. I risked a closer inspection of the phenomenon and saw that they were deploying many thousands of soldiers to the surface of the planet," Rutler said grimly. "I fear that you may face significant resistance from two separate factions of aliens if you engage them now."

"What is your advice?"

"I am not sure. We don't know if the forces deployed in combat have any intention of leaving once the fighting stops. It may be that they are at their most vulnerable while open hostilities remain among their own people," Rutler postulated. "The number of vessels in orbit is worrying, but we have detected no mass effect emissions. It is safe to assume that their ships will lack kinetic shielding. I would still keep your distance and avoid their weapons, however. The destruction that they are inflicting upon the surface is...quite impressive."

Lord Branka only considered the moment for several seconds. "We will continue with our engagement. We have neither the time nor the resources to sit around waiting for the aliens to settle down of their own accord. I fear there are too many people involved now to keep the Council out of the matter indefinitely."

"You are probably correct, my lord. Even I cannot spot every traitor before they have already done what damage they will," Rutler said. "Shall I reposition the fleet around the observatory to assist you in the battle?"

"Prepare them but do not engage," Lord Branka said. "If we must retreat from their forces, then you will cover our withdrawal."

"As you wish."

The stars blinked into view once more. Lord Branka unhurriedly contacted the bridge, and the face of Admiral Zenur was displayed before him shortly.

"Give the orders we previously discussed," the Batarian noble ordered. "Tell the fleet to proceed with caution."

* * *

Admiral Graveth watched the world burn with a low, rumbling growl in his chest.

The rebels had constructed military bases within their cities, trusting that the King would not dare to bombard civilians—his own errant subjects—from orbit. Because they had taken advantage of his good will, the King had decreed that he would not oblige them by sacrificing his own loyal soldiers in a long, bloody siege. A warning was issued planet-wide that all cities harboring rebel forces would be completely destroyed. Two weeks were provided for anyone who wished to evacuate. The rebels, witless cowards that they are, corralled as many civilians as they could within the occupied cities. They had operated under the assumption that the warnings were merely a ploy to remove the collateral damage from the equation.

The fires raging below stood testament to the fact that it was not.

Even two hundred miles above the surface of Tyre, the devastation was clear for all to see. The screens on the bridge illuminated the entire room in eerie orange, and Graveth knew that it would take more than a hundred years to rebuild what had just been destroyed in a little less than twenty hours.

"Tell General Teran that he is to subdue the remaining resistance at his leisure. The fleet will subside for now and provide fire support when necessary," Admiral Graveth ordered his aide. He turned back to the images displayed in full definition at the front of the bridge. Great scars of molten rock traced the surface of beautiful Tyre, and the sky was painted black with a sickly smoke. The city had not been visible from this altitude, but the fires which reached higher than its tallest buildings were. Anyone within fifty miles of the city limits would have been incinerated or suffocated by smoke. There were reports that even the front lines of the General's forces had suffered minor casualties, despite the fact that they stood eighty miles from the epicenter of the devastation.

Such indiscriminate destruction had not been seen since the days of the Calamity. Very few remained alive that remembered those times, and Graveth was one of them.

As he stood before the scarred planet Tyre with his face covered in deep shadows, Graveth murmured these words:

"Alas that I should have been born into the age of the setting sun, when empires crumble to dust and petty warlords took the place of the great philosopher-kings of old. To what end do I take my spear against my own kindred, blood and bone, thereby hastening our descent into shadow? A curse on arrogant kings and their scepters!"

"Admiral Graveth," the voice of his aide, tinted with the pale notes of fear, drew the old Surrassi from his somber mutterings.

"What is it?"

"We have unidentified contacts approaching the planet," the aide reported. "They are outside of visual range, but our radar is showing several massive vessels, many times as large as the greatest Void-ship in our fleet."

"Withdraw the fleet and reform into phalanx formation," Admiral Graveth reported. "Hail the approaching fleet and warn them not to come any closer."

"Yessir." The aide rushed off to do as he was commanded, bolstered by his admiral's cold determination.

The moment that Graveth saw the radar profile of the approaching vessels a chill ran down his spine. The sheer size of the Void-ship leading the foreign fleet intimidated the old veteran, but it was its accompanying vessels that sealed their fate in his mind. Admiral Graveth commanded an impressive fleet of six hundred Void-ships at the King's leisure, but they were mostly troop transports, and they were not designed for space combat. The enemy appeared to outnumber then nearly two to one.

If its size was any indication of its power, the flagship was enough to destroy a fifth of Graveth's fleet all by itself.

"No response from the unidentified vessels," the communications officer said. His voice was commendably level, but his apprehension was clear to everyone listening in spite of his effort.

The fire control officer stiffened. "We have substantial energy discharges all across their fleet," he barked. Suddenly the bridge was a flurry of panicked actions. Fingers flew across control boards, alarm klaxons began to blare, and Graveth saw his fleet responding to the hostile actions of the unknown fleet by fanning out and rushing forward to engage. He swelled with pride.

The radar readouts were replaced by visual screens, but there was very little to see besides the endless expanse of stars. The ship's intelligent cameras picked out the most important things and focused upon them, bringing the image of a vessel that hung in space some eighty thousand kilometers away into clear detail on the screen. A Void-ship of impossible size.

"The fleet is reporting casualties," the communications officer said. "Many of our ships cannot take more than a single blow from their weapons."

The remaining dregs of his confidence quit him them, as he saw for himself the devastation that had been wreaked upon his fleet by a single volley of their weapons. The thought stuck in his mind that the rebels had discovered demons in the Void and called upon them for assistance, but he found that it didn't matter.

Admiral Graveth stood up and keyed his voice so that it could be heard throughout the fleet. He took a shuddering breath.

"Today we have faced our own, fought a war against our brothers, and whereas minutes prior we were driving them before us, now we are faced with an impossible foe." He paused, and when he began again his voice began to rise in intensity and volume until he was spitting the words into the air before him with his eyes blazing. "Outnumbered, outmatched, some of you may be considering cowardice. Shall you prove yourselves to be oath-breakers before death claims you? If any of you has any remaining respect for me, then you will follow me to our deaths with honor. Do not go whimpering into the abyss with your tail between your legs like a witless cur! Swallow your fear and look your death in the eyes as she takes you."

As the last of his words echoed through the corridors of his fleet, Admiral Graveth turned determined crimson eyes to the officers aboard his own ship. "Lead the charge," he said simply, retaking his seat.

* * *

"Lord Branka, the alien fleet is charging our position," Admiral Zenur said quietly. His face had grown smaller, taking only a corner of the screen, but the need for communication was at its greatest in the midst of a battle, so the feed between the command deck and the observatory remained active.

Watching the innumerable displays before him, Lord Branka knew that the admiral was correct. But he had expected that this would be the case after reading Rutler's full report on the alien's arsenal. Their weapons were most effective within a thousand kilometers. "Hold position and punish their advance," he ordered. "Do not launch fighters until they reach ten thousand kilometers."

"Yes, my lord," the admiral replied. His quiet voice continued to broadcast orders to the fleet as Lord Branka watched the data. Warfare in space was slower than planetary conflict. It consisted of numbers and simple data, tables upon tables of organized coordinates, hull readouts, weapon performances, and strategic analyses. Branka's fleet had not suffered a single scratch, and the aliens were melting like butter before a flame as they rushed across an impenetrable distance. It would take them six minutes to get into range.

By then, only a demoralized half of their fleet might still remain.

Lord Branka felt dirty taking pleasure in such a battle; it felt much like cheating. Like stealing money from a slave. But the tactile demonstration of his fleet's awesome power was making him rather excited. The last time Branka had felt this good was after he had driven the last of his enemies from Terenum with their soldiers' broken bodies strewn about the halls of his vessel in the aftermath of their final desperate attempt to end his life. The Batarian noble bared his teeth wickedly as he watched yet another alien vessel wink out of existence, torn apart by weapons far superior to the pitiful armaments on board puny alien ships.

Not a single vessel broke away from their main force to flee. They must have known that their destruction was imminent, but still they pushed forward, even as their comrades burned around them in the freezing depths of the void. 'There is bravery,' Branka thought. He had yet to see a Batarian force show such unshakable determination. Batarians were a selfish, cowardly species in general. At least Branka had the spine to admit it. 'Such commendable courage. Perhaps I could come to appreciate these creatures in time.'

Lord Branka's fantasies of an unstoppable slave army were interrupted as they finally came into range. The floor beneath Branka's feet shuddered and an ominous groan of stressed metal rumbled through the halls of the battle-carrier.

"Report!" he barked.

"Their weapons bypass kinetic barriers, my lord. Our armor appears to mitigate some of the damage, but we will be severely crippled if they hit a portion of our armor more than once," Admiral Zenur replied. "I am ordering the fleet to begin evasive maneuvers."

"How many of the enemy ships are still operational?"

"Less than fifty."

The rest of the battle was a harrowing affair, and the fact that they actually took damage from the primitive fleet infuriated Lord Branka to the point where he was gnashing his teeth at nothing. When the last of the alien vessels disintegrated in a storm of blue fire, Lord Branka stood up. "Take the fleet into orbit and begin the bombardment of their population centers and military outposts." A cruel expression twisted his features. "Finish what they started."


	7. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

"This is not the first time that you have stood before this body in the last several months, Ambassador Rakzel. It reflects poorly on your nation that you have been called to explain incidents involving citizens of the Batarian Hegemony so frequently," councilor Tevos said as the delegates from many Council Races settled into their positions. Most of them were spectators, but the involved parties were easy to spot by the number of delegates that had assembled and the fact that they were forced to remain standing throughout the proceedings. The Citadel occasionally held meetings like this one to act as mediators in a diplomatic incident, influencing any settlements that might be reached. This time, it was the Federated Volus Clans, the Human Systems Alliance, and the Batarian Hegemony that were represented in the august chambers of the Citadel today. The usual number of spectators and news stations had gathered on the surrounding balconies to watch what promised to be an entertaining development in contemporary galactic events.

It was curious that the Volus had chosen to appear themselves, rather than allowing the Turian Hierarchy to represent them. Usually it was advantageous for the diminutive species to allow their more powerful overlords to negotiate in their stead.

The Batarian representative was a truly imposing figure, a real specimen of his race. With a broad, powerful build and a haughty presence of nobility he was truly what every Batarian male aspired to be. His height afforded him the undivided attention of the entire room as he drew himself up to address the presiding members of the Citadel Council. "As I have said before, the people you are referring to are considered outlaws, and are not individuals that are represented by the Batarian Hegemony. Their deplorable actions do not represent the views or the actions of the Hegemony any more than the rogue terrorist agency Cerberus represents the views of the Human Systems Alliance. However, we have deigned to attend these proceedings as a courtesy to our friends in the Alliance and throughout Council space."

Ambassador Udina at once began to refute the comparison, without following the strict rules of etiquette which were usually observed in this chamber. "Whereas Cerberus has never been proven to actually exist, and has not perpetuated multiple attacks on sovereign entities within Citadel Space, the Batarian Hegemony's personal brigands and disavowed henchmen have in fact been caught in the act of piracy and slavery multiple times. Large sums of money have been found leading investigators back to Hegemony space and members of Batarian nobility have already been arrested several times by Council peacekeeping forces. Clearly, there is a difference between rumor and well-substantiated fact, Ambassador Rakzel. The Human Systems Alliance demands reparations for the honorless attack which killed nearly twenty thousand Alliance citizens on Elysium and which resulted in another three thousand enslaved. We also wish to put previous incidents which have been dismissed out of hand by this chamber up for retrial."

"Your accusation that the Batarian Hegemony associated with the worthless scum that were responsible for the attack against Elysium is a grave and undeserved insult to the Batarian Hegemony," the batarian replied calmly, but his voice was filled with steel. "If there had been evidence that one of my colleagues was in collaboration with the individuals we turned over to the Council following extensive manhunts throughout Hegemony space, they, too, would have been extradited for sentencing along with the rest of the pathetic villains that were executed to appease the Alliance's sense of justice. I resent the implication that the Hegemony is in some way responsible for the actions of criminals when we have repeatedly acted in good faith with regards to the treaties that we signed with the other Council Races."

The Council members had heard all of these arguments before in the weeks following the Blitz, and they were not going to suffer another useless entanglement here, when there was a settlement that had to be reached. They had already assured their own people that there would not be a war between the Hegemony and the Alliance, despite the outrage which defined Alliance sentiment. Councilor Tevos sought to bring things back on track. "Please remember that we are here to discuss the current issue, which is the settlement agreement between the assembled delegates, and not to bicker over past disagreements."

"Of course," Ambassador Udina practically sneered, although the man would never dare to forsake proprietary to the extent of actual developing a facial expression. "I forgot that _justice_ was not the aim of today's proceedings. Rather, let us agree on the measure of petty concessions that can be given out to the poor Human Systems Alliance so that they might forget what has been done to their people. I will have you know that the Alliance is entirely prepared to _take_ what satisfaction we can find if it may not be found at this tribunal."

At last, the volus representative, a senior banking mogul with a lot of skin in the game, so to speak, cleared his throat. Batarian piracy was one his largest expenses. "I, too, find the matter of Batarian aggression to be an issue of supreme importance, honored Councilmen. Repeatedly, they have slain my brothers in their commendable businesses, and taken from their bodies what profit might be found through base savagery. If the Batarian hegemony will not take responsibility for these slights, then the Federated Volus Clans will have no choice but to seek a means by which we can protect our profits."

Although the promise made by the diminutive, bulbous, rather unassuming fellow seemed innocuous, there was an underlying bite to his filtered voice that indicated the Volus would consider a martial solution, rather than a diplomatic one, if no settlement could be reached.

"Now, we are here to reach an agreement which will satisfy _all_ involved parties in this matter," Councilor Sparatus said smoothly, giving the Volus a sharp look and ignoring the murmur of disbelief that ran through the spectators. As a protectorate of the Turian Hierarchy, Federated Volus Clans were not permitted to have military assets beyond a number prescribed to the them in a series of treaties which were collectively referred to as the Palaven Accords. Suffice to say, their military fleets were small and lightly outfitted. "The Council has reviewed the evidence submitted by all nations and proposes an agreement. The Hegemony will agree to allow Citadel fleets to operate near its borders in anti-piracy operations and provide military assistance to those fleets if necessary. The Hegemony will pay a small annual tribute to the Volus and the Systems Alliance to help repair the damage dealt by Batarian pirates. In the spirit of compromise, the Alliance will agree not to settle colonies in the Traverse, and the Volus shall alter their trade routes away from high-risk sectors."

All three of the delegates from the minor nations appeared eminently unsatisfied, but it was Ambassador Rakzel that spoke first. "While the Hegemony would be delighted to work in cooperation with Citadel forces to root out pirate havens within our borders, we refuse to accept any agreement which requires the Hegemony to acknowledge outlaws as our citizens. Such a thing would violate the laws of the Hegemony, which are held in higher regard than a treaty with the Citadel Council or the Human Systems Alliance. Paying reparations for the actions of these outlaws would constitute an acknowledgment of their citizenship."

"Is the council choosing to remain ignorant of the fact that the Alliance does not, in fact, dictate the actions of its colonial entities?" Udina began. He leveled a dark glower at the Batarian ambassador. "And rather than forcing the culpable nation to accept the consequences for their lackadaisical stance on intergalactic law, the council proposes that the Alliance give up our territorial rights in response to badly concealed Batarian proxy wars? That seems ludicrous."

Councilor Valern was shaking his head as Councilor Tevos responded to this rather brazen statement. "There has been no conclusive evidence implicating the Hegemony in the attacks on human colonies or Volus trading vessels. It is only reasonable to cut down on potential risks by scaling back enterprises in the Traverse and along the border of Terminus space. Rather than sending more colonists into potential danger, the Alliance should dedicate their resources toward safer enterprises."

"Perhaps the Alliance should mobilize the Sixth Fleet in order to guarantee the safety of our colonies in the Traverse," Udina replied tersely, gesturing forcefully with a closed fist. The involved delegates and even the observing citizens appeared shocked speechless by the human's proposal. "These are human lives we are talking about, Councilors, not _potential risks._ "

After the First Contact War, which had been an embarrassment for the Hierarchy and a pyrrhic victory for the Alliance, the Humans had amassed a fleet which was well beyond the provisions of the Treaties of Farixen. Although they refused to dismantle their navies entirely, they agreed to mothball the Sixth Fleet at Arcturus Station, which brought the tonnage of their official military forces below the amount specified in the Treaties. After twenty-seven years, it would be expensive to mobilize that fleet, but it was still possible.

The first to capitalize on the words was Ambassador Rakzel. "Really, how can we be expected to negotiate amicably with people who would be willing to violate the conditions of their own treaties rather than considering reasonable precautions which ought to have been in place already?"

"Surely you exaggerate," Councilor Sparatus addressed Udina, a tinge of warning in his voice. "The Alliance would not dare renege on the Treaties of Farixen."

"Those documents established a balance of power clearly against the interests of the Alliance, which we only agreed to under significant duress by the forces of the Turian Hierarchy. So, yes, the Alliance is prepared to recant or renegotiate all promises made in the signing of those documents," Ambassador Udina declared with a voice that cracked like a whip. "I have been authorized to inform the Council that the Alliance is willing and able to declare total war over matter. The slaughter of _our_ citizens and the destruction of _our_ cities is not something that can be swept under the rug by bribery!"

"You would be wise to remember your place in the galaxy, human," Councilor Sparatus responded with his own fire. "A breach in treaties that you have lawfully agreed to would be grounds for interstellar sanctions on the Systems Alliance."

"If the Council would take the side of slavers and pirates, rather than legitimate enterprises, then the Alliance holds all agreements we have signed with the Council in contempt," Ambassador Udina informed the council with icy calm. A wolfish smile twisted his lips. "So, allow me to present my own proposal, honored _Councilors_. The Batarian Hegemony will pay a sum of forty-three billion credits to pay for the destruction of Mindoir, Elysium, Hunter's Star, and Orion's Buckle. For the destruction of the _SSV Farragut,_ the _SSV Enterprise,_ the _SSV Ophelia,_ and the _SSV_ _Denmark,_ all of which were destroyed while in combat against the attackers involved in the attacks on the aforementioned colonies, the Alliance demands five billion credits or a comparable amount of raw materials. All of the slaves which were taken illegally from the Traverse must be returned to their colony of origin. Finally, the Hegemony shall relinquish all claims to Alliance territory in the Traverse. The Alliance reserves the right to respond to additional attacks on our citizens should the need arise in the future."

"Now who is being ludicrous?!" Ambassador Rukzel barked in such virulent language that the galactic translators almost failed to communicate his meaning. "The Alliance has _no_ right to make demands of the Batarian Hegemony over this issue. We refuse every provision of the proposed _settlement_." The last word was spat like a curse.

"Now, Ambassador Udina, surely you can be reasonable," Councilor Tevos said patronizingly. "The continued attacks on Alliance colonies are regrettable, and the Council has offered to help prevent future aggression by lawless elements, but the attacks on Alliance affiliated colonies were not uniformed military actions taken by the Hegemony. Nor is the Hegemony directly responsible for the actions of pirates, regardless the species of the brigand, unless their direct involvement is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt."

The Volus spoke before Udina could offer a counter-argument. "The Federated Volus Clans offers their support to the Human Systems Alliance in rebuilding their destroyed colonies and in combating piracy operations in the Traverse. We beg the Alliance to agree to the Council's proposal of joint efforts in Batarian space in order to avoid a wider, more detrimental conflict."

For a moment, there was silence as everyone processed the surprising words of the powerful alien banker. Councilor Tevos organized the proceedings into a final agreement. "The Hegemony will agree to open their borders to joint anti-piracy efforts by Council peacekeeping fleets, the Alliance will issue warnings to their colonial enterprises about the risk of attack, and the Volus will change their trade routes in the interest of avoiding pirate aggression. Any agreement between the Alliance and the Volus can be negotiated in private at a later date."

"Let it be recorded that the Volus promised their support to the Human Systems Alliance," Ambassador Udina added petulantly. It was the only wise thing to do, even though it really irked the lifelong politician to let the Batarians go scot-free. They might never have such an opportunity to squeeze concessions from the Hegemony again, if the slavers had learned anything from the snafu which became of the assault on Elysium, thanks to the war hero John Shepard.

The proceedings concluded with a whole lot of pomp and ceremony, and when it was over, Ambassador Udina went immediately to speak with the volus representative. The diminutive alien gestured for him to wait a moment as they walked through the halls of the Citadel, back to the human embassy, which happened to be a large, three story structure just adjacent to the Tower itself.

Once they were in Udina's rather utilitarian office, the human gestured for his guest to take a seat. "Drink?" He asked, indicating some volus-friendly beverages on the shelves abutting the left wall. The suited alien refused with a wave of his gauntlet and hopped up into a chair too tall for his legs to touch the floor.

"Not now, perhaps later," he said. After a pause and a hiss, "I assume that the Alliance has taken measures to ensure that no one listens in on confidential discussions taking place in this office."

When Udina nodded warily, the volus clasped his hands together and set them on the desk with a heavy thunk, even though he had to lift them above his lap to do so. "My name in your tongue is Petrov Ilyunakev, but that is a poor translation. I know that I did not give it during the earlier proceedings, but I was acting in an official capacity, as trustee for the entire Federated Clans, and therefore remained anonymous. Now, I am just a businessman, and here we can conduct business."

"There will be no agreement with the Federated Volus themselves?" Udina asked suspiciously.

"It would have been rather conspicuous for me to offer anything less than that in the tribunal. Please, hear me out before you take the Clans to court for a broken promise. I am sure you know that I have many resources at my disposal. Regrettably, the Turians refuse to allow the Clans to arm ourselves beyond what they consider the bare necessities required to defend our distant trade avenues. This has long been a point of contention between the Federated Volus Clans and the Turian Hierarchy. Instead of sending uniformed soldiers against the Batarians, thereby risking international reprisal, allow my company to provide resources to the Alliance through untraceable avenues. Disavow a detachment of your soldiers and commission them to act against the Hegemony as privateers. You heard the Council admit on official records that they would not hold a nation responsible for piracy by members of their race. As long as the money trail doesn't lead back to my feet or yours, the Alliance can refuse involvement in the actions of their, what was it you called them, 'personal brigands and disavowed henchmen?' However, in this way you can still respond forcefully to the attacks on Alliance territory."

"Privateers," Udina repeated quietly, once again offering that wolfish smile. "It has been a long time in human history since the days of pirates and privateers. Perhaps in a more advanced age, we ought to look back to find the way forward. I think that we might come to a suitable agreement, Mr. Petrov."

"Then let us 'hammer out the details,' as you humans might say."


	8. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

The streets of Rhun were filthy. Lined with dilapidated houses and broken concrete sidewalks, the road was pocked with craters and lined with a spiderweb of cracks. The few operational lights which hung from power lines or sat upon bent, rusted poles were dim and sometimes flickered uncertainly. A perpetual fog hung above the city, no matter the time of day, but it grew thickest in the middle of the afternoon when the heat became stifling. Visibility drops to almost nothing and the air turns foul. The people of the city could still be seen mulling about in the streets, and packs of young boys roamed the less populated districts, searching for trouble. Old, weary men stood by the corners, remembering better days.

Amosch was standing in the city square, dusty and hot, pressed in among a crowd of anxious, weary citizens hanging upon the uncertain words of Lord Oronus, the steward of Rhun. His exact statements blended together and were meaningless once the gist of his speech became clear.

The Kingdom had fallen.

The Surrassi were a subjugated species, beholden to aliens that they had never seen before. These were aliens that had completely slaughtered their military in the heavens and on the surface of Tyre. Aliens that had rounded up the two million survivors and stowed them in camps on the scorched surface of the colony. Aliens that had come to Xixisax with a fleet capable of making the beautiful green world nothing more than a smoldering collection of embers and bones. They had come, they had walked boldly into the palace in the Capitol, and they had killed the King where he sat upon his throne.

Those who tried to stop them had died, just like the other millions of souls that had perished at the colony of Tyre.

 _My son._

Amosch's voice suddenly rose in a low keening groan which gradually increased in volume and intensity, silencing Lord Oronus in the middle of his sentence. His strength failed him and the old Surrassi fell trembling to his knees as his wailing lamentation seemed to sap the energy from his bones. There were no words contained in his cry, but the harmony and pure emotion in it left no doubt as to the cause of his pain. At once he was joined by the other fathers and mothers in the crowd, those who had sent their children to Tyre for the King. The dead, worthless king.

The city square was filled with the ear-shattering noise of a thousand voices raised in agony. Sobs wracked Amosch's powerful frame and an emptiness yawned inside him that threatened to consume him entirely. His wail petered to nothing as he clutched his face in his hands, claws digging painfully into the skin above his eyes.

He whispered, "My son..."

Amosch remembered laying under the stars with his boy, telling him of a powerful warrior-king, and then he gave himself over to sorrow and rage.

* * *

Amos awakened when something hard and cold pressed against his skin. His _skin._ He convulsed, and his eyes snapped open at the unfamiliar sensation of something pressing directly against him. It was not in an isolated place, like a finger trailing through his fur, but instead the sensation of ice spread across the entire expanse of his back. It drove the air from his lungs. It made him want to hug himself tight with his arms, but when he tried to move he found cuffs rattling about his wrists and ankles.

He was chained to a cold metal slab in a brightly lit room. Spread out completely, as far as he could reach, the only thing that Amos was free to move was his head. He lifted his head up slowly, feeling like there was a lead weight burning into his skull, and when he laid his eyes upon his own body he froze and felt terror seize him. He was naked, utterly bare, stripped of his fur. His pale hide shined under the light above him with a thin sheen of some foul-smelling gel, and the sensation of frigid cold suddenly gave way to an insistent, feverish burn.

Out of his peripheral vision, Amos saw someone approaching. Immediately he turned his shame into fury and centered his gaze on the approaching creature. Its gait and scent were unfamiliar. The armor that covered every inch of its body and hid its face from sight was foreign and marked with a dark insignia that Amos did not recognize. The creature had no tail. The sound of its heart was foreign. It would have been very uncomfortable for a Surrassi to wear armor without accommodating for their extra appendage, so Amos knew at once that this was no Surrassi.

"Who are you?" he snarled. The sound rumbled in his chest and the words spat from his lips, but the creature was hardly fazed. Who would fear a Surrassi without his coat? It came to a halt beside the metal operating table.

"Can you understand me?" came the cold reply. The voice was mechanical and the accent made the sentence nearly unintelligible, but Amos recognized the words of a familiar tongue, spoken by citizens of the city Varrad on Tyre, one of their largest cities. He had not heard it spoken since his days in school, and it took a moment for him to work out the meaning of the sounds.

"Yes," he bit out. The language was as much of an identifier as Amos needed. "What have you done to me?"

He knew now that this was a rebel from Tyre, no doubt wearing the livery of his new liege-lord, likely twisted beyond recognition by metal and technology. Possibly a cripple from the war who had lost his tail. The voice modulator was meant to hide his identity from Amos and possibly intimidate him. It may have accomplished the former, but Amos would not be cowed by a simple trick.

"This will go more easily for you if you calm down," the voice responded. It was difficult for the harsh electronic tones to be consoling, however, and Amos merely growled in response. There was little effort behind the attempt at a soothing voice. "You are currently on board a medical station on the outskirts of your home system. We removed you from the battlefield because your injuries were severe enough for us to examine your healing capabilities. Now that you have recovered we wish to continue our testing."

"Testing? This is a war crime!" Amos exclaimed, rattling the restraints once again. "You can't treat prisoners of war like this!"

"Ah," came the reply. "But we are not at war. Not anymore. The war ended several days ago, as a matter of fact."

"I should have been remanded to the custody of my commanding officers then," Amos said, narrowing his eyes.

"I do believe that you were classified as killed in action. Regardless, you _are_ with the proper authorities. Per the treaties that were signed, the planet you know as Tyre is now the property of Lord Branka. This includes everything that was on its surface at the time of the signing," the voice informed him. "Yourself and the other prisoners most importantly."

"I have never heard of the name Branka."

The figure seemed to tense for a moment, before it spoke to him once again with steel in its voice. "You wouldn't have. This would be easier if you could see my face."

After a moment the visor of the foreign armor began to change. Instead of the dark, mirrored surface it had been moments ago, the visor slowly became clearer until it was perfectly transparent, but the face that was revealed by this shift was like nothing that Amos had ever seen. Belatedly he realized that his first speculations had been correct.

The creature had oblong, rigid features, complete with various wrinkles and bands of cartilage that extended from the flared nostrils and ran down on either side of the creature's narrow lips. Its face was flat. It had four black, empty eyes, two large and two small, with the small set in a pair of shallow sockets in the alien's brow. Primary eyes were encased in a formidable ring of bone, formed by the raised cheekbones and prominent brow. Its forehead seemed broader and shorter than a Surrassi's, and there were various ridges in the skin that indicated a unique bone structure. There were few similarities between them.

Both of them had wicked fangs and pointed, knife-like ears.

Amos' mind was racing, but he failed to come up with an explanation for this. "I don't understand."

"I am a Batarian," the alien said. The words that came from its helmet were delayed from the motion of the creature's lips. "We discovered your species fighting a war on our borders and came to pacify the conflict. When you resisted us with your fleet, we were forced to take drastic action. Unfortunately, most of Tyre was destroyed during the conflict, but you are among the fortunate survivors found on the battlefields. It has taken you a long time to awaken. Negotiations have concluded with your government and we have come to an agreement. I have informed you of the pertinent facts."

Amos had a sick feeling in his stomach. He found himself ashamed of the fact that he was glad that he had been injured when Tyre had fallen, even if he didn't know how severe his injuries had been. Obviously bad enough that he had missed several weeks of time. "What sort of agreement was that?"

"Terms of surrender," the Batarian replied. His expression was utterly foreign, so Amos could not tell if the tone in his voice was triumphant, sneering, or apologetic. The blunt delivery of the statement made it unlikely that the alien felt any remorse over his people's behavior.

"What happened on Tyre? How long was I unconscious? Was Xixisax invaded?" Amos asked his questions one after the other and glared up at his captor, demanding a response.

The Batarian met his glower only for a short time before averting his gaze to Amos' bare chest. "You are quite an astute creature," he said after a moment. "Much less...feral than the others."

Amos didn't respond to that statement.

"In answer to your questions, I will say this: Tyre was destroyed and Xixisax capitulated without significant bloodshed. Once they had seen what our fleet could do, they lost the stomach for war. For now we will be conducting tests. We can hardly integrate our new slaves into wider society when you put everyone at risk of falling ill with alien maladies. And you would quickly succumb to our illnesses if you were not properly inoculated. I have developed a series of vaccines that should be effective at eliminating the risk to yourself, and we will begin a regimen of treatments which will make sure you aren't carrying any harmful microbes into our cities," the Batarian said. "You are the first subject to survive the initial series of vaccines, although you were unconscious at the time that I applied them. Congratulations on your fortitude."

That was not reassuring in the least. "Slaves?"

"Perhaps you are not quite as astute as I had originally thought. Lord Branka claimed all of Tyre, including its people, for himself. That makes you slaves." the Batarian said curtly. Amos snarled and slapped his tail against the table. "Now, now, do not forget your situation. You are the one chained to a table. I am afraid that there is no choice in the matter for you. I am explaining things to you as a courtesy. No one else is likely to speak with you for some time."

"Thanks," Amos spat derisively.

The alien's expression hardened. Even Amos recognized that his patience was at an end. The Batarian walked around him and began to tap buttons on a glowing console beside the operating table. "Your condition is currently stable. It is good to see that only minor adjustments to standard medicines are required to make them compatible with your physiology. I am going to administer several shots to each of your arms."

"Stay away from me!" Amos snapped, straining futilely against his bonds.

"And I thought you were handling this quite well," the alien said, observing him as the metal of his cuffs bit into the skin of his wrists. "Those cuffs were designed for stronger creatures than you, Surrassi. Your struggling will only make this more unpleasant for the both of us."

Amos felt the metal bend, but not break. He was weakened, hungry, thirsty, exhausted. There was nothing Amos could have done to avoid the syringes as they pierced his skin. Whatever fluids they delivered could be felt like icicles sliding under his skin, cold and acutely painful. Amos hissed and growled like a rabid beast, but the alien continued its ministrations without further comment. When it was finished it disposed of the syringes in an incinerator.

"Now, you will remain here in observation for several days. I am going to hook you onto an intravenous solution which will clear your system of any potentially harmful microscopic organisms and provide your body with sufficient nutrients to sustain itself during that time," the alien informed him tonelessly. Amos had the feeling that his doctor was outlining the procedure for his own selfish reasons rather than any attempt at proper bedside manner.

Amos' struggling only made the process extremely painful, as he was warned. The Batarian had to gouge his arm several times to find a vein, but once he had it was a simple matter of applying the IV and wrapping his arm with a tight strip of white cloth. Without another word the alien departed, leaving Amos to the throbbing pain in his arm.

There were multiple things besides that to be uncomfortable about. The frigid air, the hard tabletop, the urinary catheter, the IV, the needle-tracks in his arms, the bright light glaring down upon him, the unfairness of his situation, the shock of discovering an alien with a syringe, and, worst of all, the sudden illness that gripped him.

Despite the cold, Amos felt excruciatingly hot. He knew that he was feverish from that alone, but the unmistakable scent of sickness had filled the air. Surrassi were rather susceptible to fever, since they lacked an efficient method of cooling themselves down. Panting was fine for recovering from strenuous activity, but more persistent issues such as an infection could be fatal simply because the immune response would heat the body up beyond its limits.

Strapped down as he was, Amos was helpless to do anything save gasp for the relief of the cold air and shiver pathetically. Soon after the fever set in his stomach revolted and Amos nearly drowned himself when he retched, turning his head to the side at the last moment to spit the revolting fluid onto the table. The sick he ejected was pale and orange, unlike anything that Amos had ever thrown up before in his life, and it made him wonder if he would even survive the alien's treatments. His prospects were dire, if what the creature had said about previous trials was true.

Periodically they came to take notes, although Amos had no way of telling time. The fever made it exceedingly difficult to think straight.

Amos was begrudgingly grateful that they took the time to wipe him down with a damp cloth whenever they came; it temporarily relieved the unbearable heat and saved him from the stench of his vile puke.

Any symptom of an illness that _could_ happen to Surrassi was happening to Amos. His mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton, his lips were cracked and dry, his throat was raw, his entire body ached with fatigue. He continued to retch but there was nothing in his stomach. A cough seized him at some point, it felt like several days after the needles but it must have been less time than that because his fur hadn't started to grow back yet. His sinuses clogged themselves up so that he couldn't breathe through his nose and his hearing was muted. Whenever he sneezed it spewed phlegm across his face and he was unable to do anything about it.

The hallucinations were the worst part. Millions of tiny insects crawled up the sides of the metal table and began to swallow his skin. He could feel their legs tickling across his body. They pressed down on him like a nightmarish blanket, slipped into his mouth and ears and nose. He threw himself violently about on the table, gnashing his teeth and desperately trying to claw at himself to shake them off.

Later, Amos was forced to admit that the restraints saved him from tearing out his own eyes with his claws.

The doctor came to take notes and wipe him down twelve times before Amos began to recover. As far as he could remember, that is. When the fever broke a bristly layer of hairs had begun to cover his pale skin, darker and thicker than his previous coat of fur. Amos knew from the injuries he had received in training that it took two weeks for his fur to grow back completely and another week after that for the color to return to normal. It must have been two or three days.

The doctor came again and did not return for a much longer period of time. Amos was beginning to think that he had been forgotten until he heard the doors open.

"You _are_ a tenacious one," the Batarian said. These were first words since he had given Amos the vaccines. "We were uncertain that those treatments would work at all. In fact, the very same cocktail killed four of your fellows before we gave it to you, and five while you were in the throes of your fever. The only one out of ten that managed to persevere. You should be proud."

"You are a despicable creature," Amos whispered. It was all he could manage with his raw throat.

"I've been called worse things by more worthy people than an alien slave," the Batarian replied. "Now, since you are inoculated against our diseases and carrying no harmful organisms I suppose we should decide what to do with you."

"Send me back," Amos rasped, fixing his eyes on the alien's face. It was as close to begging as Amos would ever come.

"That is impossible," the alien said firmly. "You are the property of Lord Branka. Until you can purchase your own freedom or are awarded it, your life is his. I think we can release you from quarantine and find you some more comfortable accommodations. In the meantime, I will contact Lord Branka and inform him that the first of his new subjects is ready to serve."

"I would sooner tear out his throat," Amos spat.

The Batarian merely tilted his head towards his right shoulder. "That attitude will only bring you misery," he warned. "You fought and lost, now face the consequences with honor. Or at least in silence."

Amos was not awake when he was moved to his new room. A pinch in his neck was all the warning he received before his eyelids became heavy and he slipped into a chemically-induced slumber.


	9. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

The capitol city of Terenum had no name. When colonists first arrived on the planet from Auphos, led by Lord Branka's great grandfather, they had touched down here, on a curiously truncated mountain range raised above the surrounding flatland. Fresh water springs and fertile foothills made it the perfect place for an enterprising people to construct a self-sustaining economy, and the altitude was low enough that the mountain air was still easy to breathe. Lord Branka's family had been a very wealthy, powerful member of the merchant caste, but with the acquisition of Terenum, they had joined the ranks of the revered nobility, much to the chagrin of many rival families or greedy aristocrats. They had paid an exacting price for the privilege, but the years spent consolidating their power within their holdings had paid off.

The enemies of Branka House were the reason why the capitol city was built more like a fortress than a civic center. For hundreds of kilometers in every direction there was nothing but flat farmland, and the only approach to the city was a long, fortified tunnel through some of the smaller foothills. All traffic passed through multiple checkpoints inside the tunnel before being granted access to the city. The mountains themselves had been turned into natural defenses against invasion or infiltration. The sides of the mountain had been carved to suit the needs of the inhabitants, making the climb up to the inhabited steps treacherous. Great storehouses had been constructed under the stone face of the tallest peak, and water was plentiful, making the city impossible to outlast in a prolonged siege. Most of the essential structures were barricaded beneath the ground, impervious to most legal forms of orbital bombardment. The streets, which resembled winding stairways more than roads in most places, zigged and zagged through plateaus scraped into the stone. Houses and other buildings were bored straight into the rock. Pillboxes and ambush positions were plentiful, and the defender had the advantage of the high ground in every possible combat situation.

Even if the tunnel was breached or the mountainsides scaled, there was still innumerable bottlenecks and labyrinthine service tunnels that would allow defenders familiar with the city to outmaneuver their attackers.

Barricades, walls, and military outposts put the final touches on what some people would call the most fortified city in the Hegemony. Apart from some of the private fortresses owned by other, more powerful noble families, there were few places safer for a defending army than the capitol city of the young colony of Terenum.

Amos had never seen architecture as magnificent and pragmatic as this city before, even in some of the most magnificent cities of Xixisax. Of course, he had hardly been well-traveled on his own planet, let alone this strange new world. What he saw of the city was glimpsed through the bars of a prisoner transport vessel, which followed the traffic of a main thoroughfare through the air above the city. The streets below were filled with pedestrians and the occasional bicycle, but cars or other vehicles were nowhere to be found. Instead of parking lots, it appeared that most buildings taller than a single story had a landing pad on their flat roof where airborne vehicles could put down.

The transport vehicle was constructed from hard metal and painted a dark black. Its interior was simple, with a bench on either side of a rectangular cabin and two chairs for the armed guards, but Amos was currently the only passenger. The bench across from him was empty, and there was ample space on either side of him for perhaps three other slaves. The two armored Batarian guards had their weapons laid across their knees, and their eyes rarely wavered from an intense inspection of Amos' face. From their discomfort Amos gathered that they had not been a part of the invasion force.

Or perhaps their fear was a _result_ of having participated in that slaughter.

The transport shuddered as it touched down on a large platform which acted as the roof for what must have been a guardhouse. They were quite high up on the mountainside, on a sprawling step carved in the earth, and the buildings here seemed to consist entirely of military complexes. One of the guards opened the transport's heavy metal doors while the other came to take Amos' arm. He was halted in his tracks as Amos snarled at him, baring his wicked fangs.

A thrill of satisfaction ran through him as he reveled in his ability to make these aliens cower, even when he was wearing half his body weight in chains. His bindings rattled together as he stood of his own volition and followed the guard from the transport, acutely aware of the firearms that were tracking his every move.

He was not so foolish as to throw his life away for his worthless pride, but that did not mean that he was going to act like a whipped dog. The guards seemed to deliberate together for a brief time before leading him down a stairwell at the side of the helipad. There were more guards there, four of them, and the lot of them proceeded through the corridors of the guard house until they reached a wide room with a tall ceiling and a sweeping balcony. Chest-high barriers and obvious defensive hard-points made it apparent that this room was the first line of defense for any soldiers who might end up holding the barracks against intrusion.

Amos was led down the stairs where he confronted an entourage of unarmored Batarians. His eyes sought out the most imposing of the group of four, who happened to be a tall, proud creature dressed in black and gold robes. There was another in his retinue that was more extravagantly dressed, but Amos knew just from glancing at the alien's face that this was the leader of them. The Lord Branka that he had heard so much about, perhaps. There were enough similarities between them that Amos saw the clear displeasure on his face when he saw the fear in the faces of his guards.

Amos' chains served only to make him more imposing in the eyes of his escort. He saw how defensive they were. They feared him. That was how it should be.

Amos would repay them for every drop of blood that they had spilled on Tyre and for every second of the pain he had endured at their hands the moment his chains were broken.

Amos ignored the guards and the other aliens, choosing instead to stare intently at the darkly robed figure before him. He memorized his exotic features, every ridge of his face and the dark glitter in his eyes. He could not understand what they were saying, and frankly it did not matter. It was a contest of will between them, four darkly smoldering onyx eyes matching the furious crimson fire of Amos' glower.

The Batarian admitted defeat when he turned towards one of his aides. A pleased growl rumbled low in Amos' chest. He bared his teeth and titled his chin up, a clear show of dominance, but none of the aliens responded to his challenge. The robed leader barked harsh words to the one at his side, and the guards pressed in closer to the imposing Surrassi soldier.

 _Face me yourself,_ Amos' eyes said to the alien lord. _I dare you._

The guards whisked him away shortly thereafter, and the unspoken words were never answered.

Amos found himself in a cage. Alone. It was spacious and neat, but that did not change what it was. Despite the amount of space available, the thick metal bars felt suffocating, as if they were pressing closer to him with every second he spent within their confines.

There were voices echoing throughout the halls of the prison block at all times, all of them equally unintelligible. No one had addressed him directly for...a long time. There was no way to tell how long it had been, no way to tell how many times the sun rose or fell. He was forced to measure the passage of time by the number of meals that they gave him, but they followed an erratic schedule. Possibly on purpose.

After the meeting with the alien lord, Amos had not met another Batarian. He had been thrown into this cell, which was in the basement of a building adjacent to the guardhouse, and judging from the sounds he heard from the rest of the building, he was not the only prisoner. Several times the guards had walked past his cage, but they neither spared him a glance nor a word. Not that he cared for either.

It was both insulting and relieving that they seemed to pay him no mind. Food came in the form of disgusting pastes and stews, odd mixtures of unfamiliar meats and hard, twisted plants. Amos knew that his meals did not come regularly because there were times when he was weak with hunger when the Batarian dressed in cheap, rough clothes came by with his cart of steaming slime. Other times he was still struggling with an upset stomach from the previous serving of gruel.

He knew that it was best not to waste what little food he had access to by puking, so he swallowed his nausea down and spent long hours sitting motionless in his cage, listening intently to the sounds of the prison and concentrating on his even breathing.

It was thirty-seven meals before another Batarian came to his cell besides one of the guards or the cook. This one was armored and armed, but his armaments were different from those of the standard prison guard. His armor was bereft of the now familiar insignia that the others bore on their left shoulders. The Batarian stood outside the bars of his cage, staring at him. He was not wearing a helmet, which would have been a foolish thing for a guard to do. Obviously, the armor was not intended to actually be used for a fight.

It was more likely that this particular Batarian had a certain expectation that he had to live up to. He had a part to play. He wore the armor to satisfy that requirement of his station, rather than because of its practicality. Amos respected him even less than the others of his species because of this, even if he was not completely certain that he was correct. It was a safe enough bet that he met the creature's words with a harsh snarl rather than his usual indifference.

The alien laughed. It was a rough, grinding sound, but it was similar enough to a Surrassi laugh that Amos recognized it. It puzzled him. Why should their races have similar expressions at all?

The creature said something else, and Amos decided to respond by spitting at the creature's feet. It was the most severe insult that Amos knew, far beyond any of the curses that he could have spoken in his own tongue. Those might not have communicated the full measure of his contempt.

With bark of laughter, the Batarian sliced the air with his hand and a guard snapped to his side, pressing the various keys on the bars to Amos' cell.

Amos tensed and growled low in his chest when his cage was opened. His chains still bound him, but that would not save them if they approached him.

Before he had a chance to do anything of that sort, the laughing alien drew from his belt a small gun and pointed it straight at Amos broad chest. A dual-pronged barb spat from the weapon and buried itself in the muscles of Amos' chest. The barbs were shallow but intensely painful, and Amos hissed in discomfort.

He almost laughed, wondering if this Batarian really thought such a pathetic weapon would deter him, but that was before it shocked him. Quite literally.

A lance of burning agony emanated from the barb still impacted in his chest, crawling through his bones until every part of his body was paralyzed by the blinding pain. The alien approached, his laughter silent now, and placed a thick metal collar around Amos' neck while Amos was paralyzed by the current.

Amos knew what a collar was. Their use was reserved for violent criminals on Xixisax, the worst sort of deranged villain, and Amos would have raged against the tight band of steel that bit his skin if he were not held completely motionless by whatever foul torturous tool the alien had used on him.

As the Batarian stepped back he pressed his fingers into Amos' wound and withdrew the barb. Immediately Amos collapsed boneless on the floor of his cell and the Batarian stood above him, barking another harsh laugh.

Amos howled in fury and crushed the creature's knee with his fist, feeling the armor crunch like paper under his might. The bones shattered with a satisfying _crack_ and the alien threw itself back, out of the cell, his chortle interrupted by a screech of agony. It appeared that Batarians had weak armor and weaker bones if a pathetic strike like that succeeded in causing such severe damage.

Feral satisfaction seeped through the pain as Amos raised his head to challenge his wounded torturer. Safe behind his bars, the alien lifted a small black cube and Amos felt the familiar pain coursing through his veins again.

Who knew that a small black chip, no larger than the tip of Amos' thumb could cause so much suffering?

Amos closed his eyes and whined pitifully, hating that he couldn't stop the sound from seeping past his constricted throat, but he held onto consciousness by remembering the feeling of the bones breaking under his hand. That had been worth every volt currently racing through his body, for it had demonstrated that Amos would not be dominated and controlled by anyone, no matter the collar that he bore around his neck. The weak Batarian could laugh at him all he wanted from his position of safety.

But Amos swore that the creature would die screaming if he came near him again.


	10. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

The alien, whom Amos dubbed Gimp in fond reference to his ruined leg, returned after many boring hours spent listening to the gibberish of the other inmates, hoping desperately for silence. He was flanked by four guards, and the instant that Amos caught sight of the entourage his collar treated him to an uncomfortable and persistent pulse of electricity. He snarled deep in his throat and narrowed his eyes at the disgusting creature, and the reply was yet another unintelligible sentence. Amos rose from where he had been seated and stretched his arms above his head, twitching occasionally as his collar became more and more uncomfortable.

Ostensibly this was the wrong response to whatever Gimp had said, for he immediately ramped up the collar's shock until there was pain bursting behind Amos' eyes and his limbs were trembling with the effort of keeping him upright under the onslaught of involuntary convulsions. After a few seconds, Gimp relented and watched as Amos recovered his breath with a vindictive expression on his face.

It was one of the few expressions that Amos could recognize on a Batarian face.

They brought him out of the cell and spoke to him as they led him through dank corridors, out onto the rocky steppe carved into the side of the mountain. There were more armed guards waiting for them there, and Amos' escort grew by four. He had time to wonder what they were doing, and the answer came in the form of the squat, bowl-shaped structure surrounded by a rambunctious crowd. Amos felt hundreds of eyes pressing in on him as the guards jostled their way through the throng of bodies, making their way towards the gates of what must be a sports arena. Amos realized that the number of guards was to keep the civilians away from him as much as it was to prevent him from making a run for freedom.

Despite being paraded around like some sort of show animal, Amos walked proudly and did not hang his head. They reached the gates and were admitted entrance through a side passage which dropped below the main structure of the building. Darkly lit and filled with a rank odor, the catacombs beneath the arena were a place straight from Amos' nightmares. Chains bound various horrors within their cages, and blood seeped into the dirt floor and filled the air with a sharp metallic stench. The acrid odors of urine, sweat, and other sickening fluids made breathing a difficult task, especially given Amos' acute sense of smell. He gagged and froze mid-step when the actual stench hit him like a solid wall, but he was immediately shoved forward by one of the guards.

They took him to a cage, much smaller than the one that he had been staying it up to this point, with chains hanging from the ceiling and bolted to the floor. Blocks of concrete were buried in the dirt, providing anchors for the metal loops. They took the manacles from Amos' arms and hauled him forward, despite his furious protests. Even the slightest motion was met with an excruciating shock from Gimp, who watched the struggle dispassionately. Eventually, Amos capitulated and was chained to the ceiling, though not before exchanging bruises with his eight escorts.

It really was pathetic to think that these weak creatures had defeated the King's army. It took eight of them and a shock collar to get him into a cage, what would twelve million armed and armored Surrassi warriors have to fear from these creatures?

Amos knew the answer already. Orbital bombardment was the great equalizer of modern warfare, and it could make armies irrelevant, no matter their size or skill.

To Amos' left there was another caged beast, a dog-like creature with a hinged jaw and deranged eyes, and to his right there was a large alien whose appearance was defined by the spikes and hard ridges which could be found all across its body. It was wearing trousers of a sort, so Amos assumed that it was sentient or at least mildly intelligent, but he had never seen a creature so absolutely _alien_ before in his life. Even the Batarians were more akin to Surrassi than this creature. Amos determined that it was covered with a carapace, although there were places on its body where the hard plating—likely a form of cartilage or thickened skin—gave way to dark, leathery skin. Its face was turned towards him, obviously inspecting him with the same curiosity. It had beady yellow eyes which were pressed close together on either side of the ridge at the center of its head. It didn't have a nose really; it was more of a hard angle terminating with a pair of dark nostrils. It had needle-teeth and a rigid mouth, with mandibles on either side of its jaw.

That alien was not chained in place. However, it was not free like the warriors that were strutting through the catacombs dressed in bloodied armor, with obsolete weapons swaying at their hips. Judging from the talons on its hands, Amos figured he knew why.

This was not an entirely unfamiliar place for Amos, though he had never been on this side of the bars before. Surrassi do enjoy violence. Most of their games, movies, music, and art is centered around warfare and blood-sport. What did not reference violence usually had something to do with sex, another primal attraction of the Surrassi race. Amos was no stranger to arenas and dueling for sport, but he had never actually been to the catacombs beneath the arenas on Xixisax, had never seen the conditions of the fighting men. If this was what they were like, then Amos was disgusted that he had ever sat and observed such contests of strength and skill.

There were worse things that he could be doing. As far as slavery went, Amos had been expecting something menial, backbreaking, or humiliating. At least here he had a chance to fight, even if it wasn't strictly against his captors. He was only a weapon now, but that was what he had always been, what he was destined by prophecy to become. A spear and a shield.

Eventually Amos was dragged from his cage, up a flight of stairs, and thrown unceremoniously into a dark, blood-spattered corridor. Light shined down the hall, and Amos could see the arena itself just beyond a metal grate. He walked through the tunnel slowly, shaking out his arms in anticipation for a fight.

He had only a vague idea of what to expect. On Xixisax, these fights were never death matches unless the arena was an outlaw operation, but this was not his home world. As far as he knew he could be facing wild beasts.

Organizing his thoughts led Amos to an unsavory conclusion. Amos had challenged someone who might have been Lord Branka, and was then taken to what he had considered a prison. Gimp had come to put him in a collar, which seemed to indicate that ownership had passed from the darkly robed alien to the maimed one. Amos reckoned that he had challenged the authority of the robed one, so he had given Amos over to Gimp, who might have been a manager or something for the arena. Or perhaps a man that was more accustomed to breaking those of strong will, in training slaves.

Gimp had been embarrassed in front of his own guards by an alien slave. Amos thought there was a good chance he would find himself in a fight which was intended to teach him some respect, or at least to take him down a few pegs.

Amos growled and bared his teeth when he reached the gate. If that was the case, then he would treat this like a death match even if it wasn't. He would show them that Knight did not bend his knee, did not relent, did not break.

There were four other entrances to the wide, circular arena, but Amos could not tell if there were fighters in each one or if some of them were empty. There were spikes jutting from the perimeter walls, and the arena floor was covered by a thick metal grate. The smell of fresh blood wafted up from the darkness beneath the arena floor, and Amos could see places where the metal was still glistening with gore. Not the first fight of the day, then.

Something special must have been happening, considering the size of the crowd outside the coliseum.

As far as stadiums went this one was tiny. There were only about a thousand spectators in the stands, and it was packed tight. No seat was left unfilled, even those all the way at the top. Huge view-screens hovered above the arena, and Amos recognized his own face peering at the audience from behind the bars of the metal gate.

Where was the camera? Amos searched for several moments before he spotted the drone hovering far out of reach.

Amos found it extremely disconcerting that Batarian culture was similar enough to design familiar arenas with underground catacombs and announcers for the purpose of entertainment. What were the chances of that happening by accident?

A voice, probably the announcer, was speaking in booming tones, but Amos merely narrowed his eyes and continued to stretch out his arms and legs. He counted his breaths to distract himself from his racing heart.

It there were four other combatants then it would be prudent to stay away from the middle of the arena. That made the spikes more of a risk, but Amos felt certain that he could keep himself from being impaled on them if he was only facing one or two opponents. He hoped that they were Batarian.

On the opposite side of the arena, behind his own grate and wielding a long, curved knife in his right hand, Rorgon bounced on the balls of his massive feet, practically vibrating with anticipation. He had been promised a challenging fight against a mammalian beast from one of the Batarian fringe worlds. He would have preferred it to have been another Krogan, but there were not very many of those fighting in Batarian arenas, so this would have to do.

There were very few things in this galaxy that could match the strength and skill of a battle-hardened Krogan. Rorgon narrowed his eyes and watched the grates carefully, sniffing the air in an attempt to identify his opponent. There were too many scents and sounds in the air for him to have any idea what was lurking in the darkness beyond the fates of the other tunnels.

Rorgon hoped there were many of them. A deranged grin split the old lizard's face and he brandished his knife.

Amos startled when the metal grate suddenly slid into the ground, although he really ought to have been expecting it. He stepped beyond the threshold and saw that a terrible beast was emerging from the opposite side of the arena, wielding an impressive blade in its right hand. As they approached each other cautiously, Amos sized up his reptilian opponent.

The creature was huge. Its body was hard and muscle-bound. Its head was couched in what might have been chitinous plating and seemed to jut from a sizable pack of bone and muscle. Its mouth was a wide gash filled with a variety of broad and pointed teeth. An omnivore, then. It was shorter than Amos, but only by a few scant inches, and it was obviously superior by weight.

Amos had no knowledge of the creature's pressure points, joints, or vital organs. He couldn't anticipate speed, range of movement, or center of gravity. But all these same disadvantages worked in his favor, assuming that the reptile had not fought Surrassi before.

The beast barked something at him in a low, rumbling voice reminiscent of the growl of a mighty Surrassi, and Amos responded in kind, dropping into a combat ready stance with his claws splayed open and a tremendous snarl splitting the air between them, rippling up from his belly like the heat from a bellows.

The creature laughed—how curious that this species, too, would have such an expression—and threw aside its blade. It said something else and marched forward stolidly.

The beast had a low center of gravity, Amos discovered. It had short, muscular arms, colossal legs, and a barrel-like torso which might as well have been constructed of Void-ship armor as far as Amos was concerned. At least the beast, whether by honor or some alien custom, had leveled the playing field in terms of weapons. Amos saw that the creature's fingers were tipped with hard claws, thick but blunted. Nothing like the wickedly sharp claws of a Surrassi, but dangerous enough.

Still, Amos did not know how well his claws would hold up against the plates protecting the creature's skull and back. In the seconds between the beast's grumbling declaration and its approach, Amos identified a few targets on his opponent's body and moved to meet his enemy.

It was almost saddening that they were forced to fight. This was obviously a creature of some intelligence, a mighty warrior of its own kind, and here he was, naked to the waist, facing against an unknown alien for the amusement of their foreign spectators. Despite his sorrow, Amos was determined not to hold anything back in this fight. If he let the beast gain an advantage, he was sure that his life would end here, on a Batarian arena floor, and that was not an end Amos would accept.

It was not a suitable conclusion to the Surrassi race, to their only remaining Knight.

The clash of titans began with a tremendous collision of mass and muscle. Amos ducked the creature's heavy-handed punch and slashed his claws across the beast's chest, tearing three deep gashes in its side. Orange blood poured from the wounds and dripped onto the metal beneath them, but the creature barely even twitched. A fist came down on Amos' shoulder, rattling his posture and interrupting his follow-up. The alien bore down on him, intent on overpowering Amos with sheer weight, but the Surrassi had met opponents of similar might before, and he centered himself just in time, halting the alien's advance with a mighty heave.

The crowd gasped as they strained against each other.

Apparently, the alien was just as surprised as they were, but it was a momentary weakness and gave Amos nothing to work with. The reptile brought its arms up and began to grapple with the intention of taking Amos to the ground and crushing him under its formidable bulk.

That was fine for Amos. In such a contest Amos felt he had the advantage due to the range of motion in his elbow and shoulder. The hunch-backed lizard was slightly stronger than Amos in a pure contest of brute force, but Surrassi were quick learners and Amos began to exploit the creature's limited flexibility in only a few short moments.

The creature was speaking in that rumbling voice constantly now, laughing as they crushed each other's arms between them. Claws bit into flesh and bruised muscles. Amos snapped his teeth in the alien's face and tore a chunk from the meat of its arm, but the alien only laughed some more and threw the Surrassi away, stalking after him even as he regained his footing.

Amos narrowed his eyes at his opponent and saw why. The gashes across his chest had already stopped bleeding. In fact, as he looked closer he noticed that there was pink tissue already closing the gap in the alien's flesh. It was regenerating.

As they engaged again Amos knew that a test of endurance was out of the question. Normally he could outlast his opponents but with this beast's advantage there was no question that he would inevitably lose. His cuts and bruises would remain while his enemy's would heal in the midst of combat.

This had to end quickly.

Their arms tangled together again, and the creature's skull came rocketing forward, driving the hard crest of his skull into Amos' forehead. Stunned, the Surrassi staggered back, narrowly avoiding a bone-crushing swing of the alien's meaty fist. He shook his head and roared, numbing the throbbing pain in his skull with fury.

Again, the crowd and the alien seemed surprised that Amos was still on his feet after that. This time, Amos capitalized on the creature's hesitation. He shot forward, feigned another slash at the beast's chest, then drove his forefinger and claw straight into the beast's left eye. The organ popped like a squashed grape and Amos barked his satisfaction at the severity of the wound that he had caused. Even if he lost, this creature would never forget him now. The alien gave a deafening yell and heaved, throwing Amos off his feet, but even as he soared through the air his claws tore across the creature's face, leaving several great gashes in the soft flesh.

He hit the ground and rolled, just in time to avoid having his head crushed under the alien's boot. Now that the alien was cautious it would be impossible to take its other eye. The moment Amos was on his feet he engaged the lizard in what could loosely be classified as a boxing match. They traded heavy blows with little consideration given to defense, hammering each other repeatedly. Amos felt his skeleton rattling with each tremendous strike. At last the reptile stepped back and Amos gasped for breath, circling to the left, towards the blind spot.

His entire body ached. He knew that his bones would be cracked or bruised by the beating he had taken, but his opponent was bleeding from at least twenty different cuts and gouges. He felt the playing field was relatively even.

Amos feigned another swipe at the alien's face, and the creature tried to capitalize on the expected motion, but the instant his arms shot up they grasped nothing but air. Amos ducked, sunk his claws into the creature's thigh, and put his whole back into a tearing motion even as he stepped back. Two fist-sized chunks of meat tore free.

With that short exchange, Amos figured he had brought the fight firmly into his control. Such a serious injury would sap the creature's strength and limit its mobility, if it didn't turn out to be fatal. If a leg injury that severe was dealt to a Surrassi he would bleed to death in around two minutes.

This was not a Surrassi, however.

Amos dodged a hammer fist to the back of his head, straightened up and kicked the mutilated leg for good measure. Blood splattered across the ground as the creature roared and barked what could only have been foreign obscenities in Amos' face as it fell to a knee. Enraged, the beast threw itself forward and wrapped Amos in its arms, digging the hard crest on its head into Amos' ribs. As they began to fall, Amos twisted violently, turning their combined mass so that they hit the ground rolling. The alien seemed intent on crushing Amos' ribs with its arms, but it met more resistance than expected from Amos' solid bones.

Amos put one arm against the ground and pushed, rolling the creature onto its back. Its hands reached out, scratching across Amos' shoulders, aiming for his throat, but Amos was patient. The reptile had underestimated the sturdiness of the Surrassi, had counted on breaking his back in a bear hug, crushing bones like twigs within mighty arms. But Amos had survived, and now the reptile's life was forfeit, he only just had to work out the final moments of the battle.

Amos slapped the creature's arms aside, reared up, and tore at the creature's face with his claws. Flesh pulled away in long ribbons and chunks. The alien was becoming more and more frantic, realizing his dire circumstances, hammering Amos' ribs and stomach with blow after blow, each growing weaker than the last.

Amos twisted to the side and took the creature's second eye as his claws skipped across the bones of the alien's skull, dug beneath the crest of his forehead. The crowd hissed in sympathetic pain, but Amos ignored them as he twisted to the side, pressing down, past the creature's flailing arms. Their heads smashed together, but Amos had a more flexible neck and slipped past the beast's wide, gnashing jaws. His teeth sunk into the tough, leathery skin protecting the creature's wide neck, sliced like razors through the slick hide, finally catching on a bundle of bones and tendons.

Putting his legs beneath him, Amos tore the vital area to shreds and spat the contents of his mouth onto the floor. The overpowering bitter taste of the creature's blood numbed Amos' senses, and for a moment he almost went back for another mouthful, but he shook his head and maintained his cool temperament. The beast made a final attempt to strike at him as he stepped back, and Amos repaid the attempt by breaking the creature's formidable jaw with the heel of his foot, sending broad teeth tumbling into the darkness below the metal grate.

Amos was bruised and bleeding from shallow scratches. He probably had a few cracked ribs.

In comparison the lizard's throat had been ripped out, his face was utterly mutilated, his eyes had been ruined, his arms and chest were covered with deep gouges and scabs, and his leg was missing several meaty chunks. Amos noted that a lot of the wounds had stopped bleeding, but even so there was no way that the creature could survive. He could hear it wheezing, trying to breathe through a severed windpipe, and thick, orange blood was pouring from its wide throat.

The crowd seemed to be split between absolute disgust and amazement. Some were on their feet, cheering and waving their arms while others were averting their eyes from the screen. Amos cared for none of them. He simply watched as the creature below him fought for its life against mortal injuries, and bowed his head as it attempted to draw its final gasping breath.

High above the arena, seated comfortably within his own private booth, Manager Nyloth flexed his aching leg and regarded the pathetic scene below him with poorly concealed fury. Rorgon had assured him that he would never lose a fight, and for a hundred years he had never been shown to be a liar. Now he was dead.

"We should have expected this," his aide, Wraley, muttered. That was a poor decision.

"Yeah?" Nyloth practically hissed, turning his impressive glower to the Batarian man seated beside him. "If that were the case, why did you put your damn credits on Rorgon?"

Wraley shrunk away from his furious employer and scratched his forearm. "Well, I never thought..."

"Exactly," Nyloth said decisively. He hoisted himself up and winced when weight was put onto his leg. "At least there is some small comfort we can derive from this debacle."

Wraley didn't risk another word.

"If that horrendous beast can tear apart a Krogan like that, what could possibly stand in its way? And if we cannot cow him, can't make him subservient, then the next best thing is to treat him as a beast, turn him into an animal. Animals don't plot for revenge."

As the manager limped out of the booth, Wraley shuddered and glanced back at the creature looking above the former champion of this arena. He could already see the feral edge to that alien's tactics and movements, could already read the thin line between desperation and blood-lust. He held his tongue, and followed the Manager down to the arena floor to consult the trainers.


	11. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

The Corsairs took the Traverse by storm. It started as a rumor; there happened to be a string of attacks on Hegemony convoys traveling near the Traverse, and they shared similar qualities. The convoy would send a distress signal which claimed that they had come under attack by a small fleet of military frigates or cutters, and when reinforcements arrived they would find all of the Hegemony's civilian vessels dead in space, with their engines destroyed. Every Batarian on board was dead, and their cargo was missing. The military escorts were either blown to smithereens or missing in action. This happened four times before the galactic rumor-mill began to spread the word that there was a new player on the piracy scene, one with a vindictive streak a mile wide and enough firepower to endanger Council patrols.

The name began to circulate in the Terminus, mainly from the planet Romus. Warlord T'Lanus struck a deal with the Corsairs, allowing them to refit their vessels in her spaceports as long as they paid her tribute. She also made it clear that any Asari slaves who were liberated from Batarian vessels were to be sent to Romus, where they could be redirected to their homes…for a price. A warlord she might have been, but heartless she was not.

Ex-Specialist Taylor would say that about half of the popular rumors about the Corsairs were true. They rarely left survivors when they raided a convoy, yes, but they didn't make a habit out of eating Batarian youths raw in the middle of an active raid. Currently the big, Human man was sitting at a workbench in the hangar of the _Jolly Roger,_ cleaning the gore from his armor and checking his guns. He had a permanent grimace plastered on his swarthy features, and it apparently slipped his notice that he was currently scrubbing a squeaky clean spot of his breastplate in continuous circular motions. Again and again and again.

"Taylor?" Jon said from beside him, startling his fellow Corsair from his thoughts. "You know you've been cleaning that same spot for five minutes, right?"

As far as pirates went, Jon was basically the stereotypical image. A lanky fellow with yellowy skin and narrow, slanted eyes. He had a crooked nose and a few fake teeth, his skin was basically an appalling collection of scars and contagious diseases, and his hair was as greasy as the treads of a Grizzly armored personnel carrier. He swung down onto the bench beside Jacob and clapped his dirty old Avenger down beside Taylor's pile of blue and white armor. Or, it would have been blue and white, if it wasn't painted a macabre collection of purple, orange, and green.

Jacob grunted and returned his attention to his armor.

"What's on your mind, mate?" Jon asked. He spoke English with an accent that was an unusual mix between Scottish and Australian. The colonies all had their own distinctive accents, and Arcturus had a big enough native population that it was beginning to develop its own culture, but many of them were so similar to Earth's nations that it was impossible to tell where someone was from just by listening to their voice. Regardless, Jacob was glad to find someone whose lips matched the voice in his ears.

Translators were great, but nothing compared to speaking the same language.

"Nothing," he replied, regardless. "Just some old baggage."

"I see how it is," Jon answered, beginning the process of meticulously dismantling his weapon and inspecting each aspect of the machinery before slapping it all back together again with something of a haphazard grace. Taylor had only ever seen people do it the Alliance way, which was efficient enough but nothing close to what essentially amounted to an art-form in Jon's hands. "What?"

"Just the way you clean your gun," Jacob said, gesturing at the spectacle. "Its...interesting."

"Aw, you Alliance types need to get out more," Jon said with a nasty grin. "Out in the Terminus, nobody has time for your crisp little field manuals."

"The Terminus?" Taylor asked, feeling stupid. He'd been with the Corsairs for six months and he still hadn't taken the time to talk to anybody other than in passing. It had been a good decision at first, since casualties had been heavy for the first six or seven raids, but they had gotten to the point where they hardly even got scratched and Jacob still felt like he hardly knew anybody.

"Oh, aye," Jon said. He made a show of puffing out his chest. "Romus, Ilium, Omega, you name it. I've been there."

"Is that why it doesn't bother you, then?" Jacob asked before he could stop himself. Jon blinked, raising one of his bushy eyebrows.

"What?"

In for a penny in for a pound.

"The killing," Jacob clarified. Jon looked genuinely confused. Jacob sighed. "Forget it."

"Nah, mate," Jon said quickly. "If that's what's on your mind, then spit it out. I'm not sure I'm followin' you."

"Well, every raid I've been on the boarding party makes short work of the armed crewmen, but the Captain insists that we leave no survivors, even if they've already surrendered," Jacob said. He fidgeted and put down his armor, figuring there was no way he was going to concentrate on that as well as the conversation.

Jon nodded in understanding. As far as crooks went, he was a fairly sympathetic guy, even if his breath could knock you unconscious at ten paces if the wind was right. "That's the way it works. Out here, the laws you've been following in the Alliance are seen as a weakness."

"Is it really necessary?" Jacob asked.

"They'd do the same t'ya if you'd let 'em," Jon said. Seeing that he wasn't getting through to ole Alliance, he changed tacks. "Look at it this way; these blokes don' speak your language. You think you're showing 'em mercy by letting 'em off with a warning, but they just come back next week and stick a bullet in your arse for the trouble. They respect power here, not whatever passes as honor back in Citadel Space. The Corsairs' whole mission is to strike fear in the Hegemony and get 'em off the backs of the Alliance colonists. To do that you have to speak _their_ language. Namely: bullets and blood."

Jacob sighed. "Every shot I took at a guy kneeling in plain sight or at someone whose back was turned felt like it tore my guts out. I come back with less and less of myself every time."

"It's a social thing," Jon said, finally putting his gun down and fiddling with the iron sights. "You were raised by decent folk, I'd wager. They taught you decent things. These guys and guys like me, we weren't. My da told me 'if someone throws a stone at you, throw knives at them. The next time, they won't dare to throw anything.' That's just the way things are."

"I feel like I'm out of my element," Jacob confided, wondering what in the hell he was saying. Jon gave him what he must have thought was a reassuring smile, but it turned Jacob's stomach more than his attitude.

"You are, Alliance," Jon told him bluntly. "There are a lot of you folk in the Corsairs, and some of you do better than others. But we're heading back out there tomorrow. I think maybe you'll get used to living without your guts after a time."

Satisfied that he'd done his good deed for the day, the pirate stood up, taking his gun with him. As he left, Jacob muttered under his breath, "That's exactly what I'm afraid of."

Ex-Specialist Taylor picked up his armor and began to scrub once again, but he didn't think he would ever get the stains out.

* * *

Amos dubbed his roommate Hairy, due to his utter lack of hair. He thought the name was suitably ironic, considering the creature's only patches of fur worthy of note were two lines on the brows of his eyes and a matted, knotted mess around his jaws. Amos assumed that the creature was male due to his stocky build and earthy scent, but he figured that with aliens anything was possible. It hardly mattered what gender this creature was.

After the confrontation with the big lizard, Amos had been subjected to a series of invasive examinations and then doomed to spend his days in what might have been classified as an apartment if it wasn't bereft of furniture and other basic necessities. His roommate happened to be an alien that Amos had never seen before—which begged the question: just how many different aliens actually existed?

When Hairy spoke, it was a different sound and cadence than the other aliens. The presence of merely two eyes, which were not entirely black like the slavers' eyes, along with the utter lack of fur and the unique voice were just a few of the differences between this creature and Batarians. It was one of the many aliens that Amos had seen since his arrival on this planet.

For example, there were the blue/purple/white females which Amos collectively dubbed Blues for their colors, there were the lanky, stinky things with huge eyes that Amos called Twigs for their thin limbs, and the large, brutish carapace-wearing things which Amos called Spikes for obvious reasons. His captors, Amos knew, were Batarians. As for Hairy, who was currently inspecting him with as much, if not more interest as Amos had showed him, Amos decided that he would call his kind Rutashes after a blind creature on Amos' home world, due to the dullness of his eyes. There was no light at all in them; they were dark like the beady black orbs of the Batarians, except Rutashes had a white part and a colored part. It was really quite fascinating.

Hairy said something to him again—he hadn't quite gotten it through his thick skull that Amos couldn't understand his speech—and Amos merely wrapped his leathery tail slowly around his own right arm. "I cannot understand you," he replied to the creature in the tongue of his native city, knowing that his words would mean nothing. Hairy heaved his broad shoulders and glanced through the tiny window, across the crowded streets and the sprawling plains beyond.

This was better than a cage, Amos decided. Even though he couldn't interact with the other slaves as well as he would have liked, and even if he felt as though he might find himself stuck with a makeshift knife at any moment by one of the more unstable denizens of the filthy apartments, Amos was glad that he could wander the halls. There was a cafeteria, which Amos discovered served meals every day at certain times, although he had no way of knowing when those times were. They rang a bell to let people know that they were handing out whatever garbage they had whipped up in the kitchens. It took several weeks for Amos to get used to the length of day.

Amos did not know what laid in store for him on this world, but he settled in and determined to weather the storm. If his first fight had been any indication of his future battles, then he was sure he would be able to survive. The doctor had said something to him about buying his freedom, and there was an inkling of hope worming in Amos' chest that refused to fade despite his unfamiliar surroundings. Something in his eyes must have betrayed his determination, for Hairy caught his gaze and gave him a slow, encouraging nod. Amos didn't know what was intended by it, but he took it to mean that Hairy was expressing his solidarity with the strange creature who shared his room, and that was some small comfort to him in this incoherent place.

Amos wondered if Hairy would take offense if he tried to climb into the Rutash's bunk. Surrassi spent a lot of time in close contact with each other, touching each other in conversation and sleeping beside each other in close quarters. During his time in the military Amos had been content with sleeping among the outcasts of the barracks, and whenever he returned to his home he took whatever opportunity he could to remain close to his parents.

It was more difficult at home because Father and Mother were constantly having sex with each other. That certainly hadn't been a problem in the barracks, since there wasn't a female to be found within fifteen miles of the military base and males were too competitive to submit to each other without…violence. Such behavior was discouraged at every opportunity, for the Kingdom required children, and children could not be produced by men or women with a taste for their own gender.

Regardless, Amos was starting to feel incredibly isolated. He hadn't communicated meaningfully with another creature in what felt like months. Still, Amos had no desire to get into a fight with his hairless roommate, so he gave up the idea for the moment. Maybe later, or maybe if he came back to the room when he was injured, then Amos might move to sleep nearer.

He didn't think that Hairy would be able to object too much, considering the difference in size and strength between them.

Eventually, Gimp came with his escorts and started barking at Amos while the Surrassi was lumbering through the halls of the complex. Unable to understand the orders, Amos made as if he was going to continue on his way, but he was rewarded for his attempt with a hefty shock from his collar. Hissing and leaning against the wall, Amos glared at Gimp and cracked his tail like a whip.

It obviously did not intimidate the Batarian at all. He said the same thing, gesturing at Amos. "Thakrus" was the only word that Amos could pronounce in the entire diatribe. By now there were some other slaves watching the scene from their doorways or crowding at the end of the hall.

Amos scowled and endured repeated punishments for his failure to read Gimp's mind and divine his intentions. By the time he stood up for the sixth time, he began to stalk towards them with the intent of taking that little black remote and shoving it so far down Gimp's gullet that his hand would burst from the creature's belly. Surprisingly, this must have been what they had wanted him to do, since they turned and began to walk away from him.

Leading him to the entrance of the facility, they checked him out and practically dragged Amos through the streets until he came to a squat, rectangular gym not far from the slave dormitories. It was open to the sky and the ground was covered with a layer of blood-splattered sand.

Under the intense gaze of the hot red sun, Amos was pushed into a sandy pit. The finely ground rock was hot under his feet and light reflecting from the metal walls of the arena forced him to narrow his eyes. Amos was given an archaic spear—it was nothing like the sophisticated weapon that he knew from the King's army—but he knew better than to turn it on his captors when he wore the collar around his neck. Surely, he could have killed one or two of them before he was be brought down, but for what purpose? Perhaps they would kill him them, and he would have accomplished nothing. Putting aside his violent fantasies, he hefted the unfamiliar weapon and waited.

The spear may not have been of Surrassi make, but as far as weapons were concerned there were very few practical differences between one type of pole weapon and another. It only took a few experimental swings for Amos to become accustomed to the weapon's balance, but he knew that it would take longer than that for him to achieve any kind of skill with it. At least his military training would not go to waste.

A Spike entered the arena and was given a long metal blade. Amos was confused for a moment, since this alien was not wearing a collar like Amos, but had come forward to fight nonetheless. There was no audience here to watch this contest. The Spike's blade glinted dangerously in the sun when the creature brandished the weapon. The alien settled into a threatening pose, and its dark, beady eyes closely inspected his new opponent. Like the lizard-beast, this alien's joints were unfamiliar to him, and so was the stance that it took.

Amos assumed that this would be a battle to the death as it had been before. Immediately, he decided that he would not provide his captors with the entertainment they were surely seeking. He would end this as quickly as he could, without playing games with the life of this pitiful soul.

Gimp and the guards stepped behind a clear screen which appeared to be made of glass. The scratches and dents in its surface stood testament to its sturdiness, however. The doors to the arena closed, leaving no avenue of escape.

The other creature obviously understood the harsh language of their captors, for a command was given and he began to advance. Taking cues from his enemy, Amos settled into his own stance and gripped his spear tightly. He considered throwing it and skewering the Spike before he could close the distance, but that would have been cowardly, for his enemy was armed only with a bladed weapon, and this was as close to a duel as these aliens would likely ever get.

The chief advantage of the a spear compared to the sword in the Spike's talons was reach, and Amos sought to exploit that by harassing his opponent with swift jabs to the center of mass. Knowing that he could not remain at the edge of Amos' range and avoid injury for long, the Spike circled just out of reach for a moment, and when Amos came forward for another attempt at harassment, he attempted to bat aside the spear and come close for blade-work. The second advantage of a spear over a blade was flexibility; Amos could change the distance of engagement at any time with little warning. Allowing his spear to be knocked aside, Amos spun the haft about so that the counterweight crunched into the side of the Spike's skull. Staggering and disorientated, the alien swung wildly, but Amos leaned away from the blade and turned his spear once more as he stepped back out of reach. Leaning forward in a powerful lunge he suddenly impaled his enemy through the chest as the Spike feinted at the wrong time, blocking the final retaliatory strike with his left palm on the Spike's wrist. Lifting his leg, Amos kicked the creature off his spear and watched dispassionately as he fell to the sand.

It was over. Less than thirty seconds had passed.

There had been no enmity between Amos and this creature; there was no reason for Amos to have slain him other than poor circumstance. But Amos did not allow himself to feel remorse for what was necessary. Perhaps Amos would have felt guilt for killing the alien if it had been before the Battle of Tyre, but having witnessed battle on such a terrible scale, this duel hardly disconcerted him. During any armed conflict, Amos' role as a warrior was to deal death efficiently; mercy was reserved for peace-time.

Blue blood gushed from the gaping wound in the alien's chest, and Amos ignored the furious shouts of his captors to bow respectfully to his fallen enemy. That much, at least, was deserved. When he straightened again, his spear was suddenly wrenched from his grasp and he was shoved down into the sand. Voices roared, and he watched as his captors tried in vain to stem the tide of blood. Even though he was ignorant of his enemy's physiology, he knew that the wound was fatal. The barb on the spear was easily as long as the creature's chest was thick, and Amos had skewered him utterly upon it. A through-and-through puncture.

Amos wondered briefly if he had been expected to spare his opponent, but he decided immediately that unless he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that these were not battles to the death, then he had no choice but to fight with lethal intent. To do otherwise would be naive and dangerous.

He was brought up by his arms and dragged bodily back to his apartment, where the guards pushed him to the ground and stood vigil over him while the others continued to shout.

Hairy came from the bedroom and saw what was happening. He heard the shouting from the arena, but said nothing. Likely he knew that his words would not he heard, but still his eyes rested heavily on Amos. Suddenly the door slid open and the rest of the guards, along with Gimp, came into the cramped apartment. There was malicious intent in Gimp's black eyes, and Amos understood immediately that the creature was committed to making his life as miserable as possible. He was proven correct when Gimp gestured curtly to the guards and they began what Amos would later remember as the most brutal, meticulous beating he would ever receive. They were very careful not to break any of his bones as they crowded around him and rained blows upon him, but even so they managed to crack several of his ribs. They paid special attention to his sides, where the ribcage ended but above his pelvic bone, driving hard fists or pointed boots into the soft tissue with reckless abandon. Whenever Amos rose up, roaring his fury, the collar took him about his neck and threw him bodily to the ground, convulsing as he hissed and spat like a rabid beast. Gimp watched this all with a satisfied look on his face, fingering the controls of the little black remote.

Eventually, it was determined that Amos had taken enough. The guards stepped back, and the Surrassi spat a wad of blood onto the grimy floor. When he was thrown onto his back, every inch of his body throbbed with pain, and even the slightest movement provoked agony.

Amos had not even noticed them leave, and Hairy wasn't about to approach him when he was growling so viciously. It felt like hours had passed by the time Amos calmed himself down and began to gather his senses. When he finally motivated himself to try and regain his feet, Hairy stepped forward from where he had been watching and hauled the Surrassi up by the arms. They looked at each other for a moment, Amos in shame and Hairy with an unreadable, foreign expression on his features. Then they went about their business.

Just when his bruises finally began to heal, the guards returned. Amos was expecting another beating, but instead he was led onto the roof of the dormitory and shoved into the back of a dark black transit car, where he was sandwiched between two heavily armored guards. The ride was smooth, and Amos got the impression that they were moving incredibly fast, but he could not see out of the windows from where he was seated between the plated shoulders of his escorts, so he knew nothing of the route that they traveled. When the car alighted on a squat platform beside a wide, cobbled street, Amos was led toward a sprawling coliseum. The streets of this city were flat and wide, crowded with vehicles and pedestrians alike. The buildings were newer, constructed of glass and steel, and the sheer number of citizens far outmatched anything that Amos had seen in the mountain-city. There was already a crowd gathered under the darkened arches of the colossal stadium, but the guards took Amos around the throng, deep down into the catacombs.

Despite the apparent wealth of this city, the underground portion of the arena was unfortunately familiar to Amos in squalor.

Thick chains clacked together as slave-warriors walked through dimly lit tunnels. Bloodstains, fresh and old, soaked into the dirt floor and filled the air with a familiar biting stench. Amos could feel his heart begin to beat more strongly as he scented the air. Armed guards stood in shadowed corners and beside open doorways, watching the fighters prepare themselves for what would likely be their deaths. Slaves sat upon the benches, wearing archaic suits of armor and clutching imitations of obsolete weaponry. Some of them were trembling with fear, and others regarded their surroundings with jaded eyes. The feral, mindless ones were held in their cages, weighed down by manacles and chains. It was these pitiful creatures, helpless even within the sanctity of their own minds, that Amos most feared. Amos had no time to inspect them more closely, as he was taken quickly through the catacombs and into a tunnel, where he stood before a familiar metal gate.

Beyond the spiked, unforgiving bars, an enthusiastic crowd of thousands, maybe tens of thousands, gathered in the wings of the coliseum. The whole scene reminded Amos of the sporting events of Xixisax, where great multitudes would gather to cheer for their chosen champion. Massive screens of impressive size and quality displayed Amos' face as he peered out at the sea of bodies in the stands, and the instant they caught sight of him a pregnant hush fell over the masses.

Amos figured they had never seen a Surrassi before. He drew himself up and glared into the camera of the small hovering drone.

When the grate shuddered and ground open, Amos stepped gingerly out onto the unfamiliar battleground. The stone arena floor just outside the grate was slick with blood, and Amos paused as he peered at the fresh signs of a recent battle. He could hear his heartbeat roaring in his ears as the rich aroma wafted up to meet his face. Shaking his head, Amos was forced to proceed nearly to the very center of the arena just to put his feet on less treacherous ground. The crowd fell almost silent when they saw him standing before them, and astonished whispers swept through their ranks.

The unmistakable sound of another gate rattling itself open broke the near-silence. A predator came prowling forward into the hot sun. He was a proud, majestic creature, with a rich golden pelt and slitted yellow eyes. This was not like the lizard-beast that Amos had fought, for this creature had no intelligence in his eyes. He was truly a primal being, and judging by his starved appearance, hunger was the only thing on his mind. The creature reached the place where Amos stood and offered a primal challenge with a hiss and snarl. His rich fur stood on end, and he drew itself up to appear as large and threatening as possible. Which was very large and very threatening.

Amos remembered how he had done the same trying to impress his father as a young cub. He almost smiled. The similarities between this creature and a Surrassi were striking, no matter the leaps of evolution that had taken a beast and made a man.

The Surrassi ex-soldier knew this creature's mind better than any of the aliens he had met so far, and in answer to the hunter's clear challenge, he gave a bestial roar and splayed his claws before the predator's eyes. Amos found that he was more reluctant to slay this beast than he had been the Lizard or the Spike, if only because there was an understanding between Amos and this feline. No matter how primitive it was, there was communication between them that hadn't existed with the other aliens.

Still, it seemed that there was no choice but to fight. Fighting was familiar. It was easy. In some ways it was a universal form of communication. And the beast was starved, blood-thirsty, violent. Amos' challenge was met with a roar.

As his tail cracked like a whip behind him, Amos bared his fangs and rose to his full impressive stature before the proud creature which stood before him with its hackles raised. Even the spectators high above the arena leaned away from the ferocious display as Amos' own roar shook the very stone beneath his feet, amplified a hundred times by the massive speakers above him.

The huge predator probably weighed more than Amos, and would have been truly impressive if it were not starved. With hunger gnawing at its belly, the feline would hardly refuse a fight, even against an opponent as intimidating as the Surrassi. Knees bent, Amos prepared for the beast to pounce. And pounce he did. The cat launched itself off the ground in time with a raucous cheer from the audience. Entirely absorbed in the spectacle, the crowd surged forward again in their seats as Amos rose up to meet the beast in the air. Two predators collided with a bone-shattering _thud,_ and Amos was borne back with the momentum of his opponent. His claws sunk through the pelt and into the flesh of the beast even as he toppled backwards, slamming flat against the hard stone and rolling in spite of the way his entire body screamed in protest at the abuse that he had just taken. His wide feet caught the beast in the belly and Amos threw his opponent over his head, yanking a chunk of muscle and fur from the animal's shoulders as it passed over him. Claws scrabbled across Amos' fur, but scored only minor scratches, and Amos levered himself to his feet as the beast recovered its balance and turned towards him again. They circled slowly, assessing their injuries and trading threats in the form of rumbling growls and low, sibilant hisses.

Amos challenged it again, roaring boldly in its face. Blood poured from the wound in the cat's hulking shoulder, staining its rich golden pelt dark maroon, but the beast was driven mad by the pain. As he charged again, Amos fell upon it, striking at its whiskered face. Its heavy paws swiped at Amos, but the Surrassi was a slippery opponent, and the predator was continually frustrated in its attempts to score a solid blow. Soon the big cat was weeping blood from a hundred scratches, and it launched itself desperately forward in a desperate effort.

Even a primal intelligence such as the beast's knew that it could not compete against the Surrassi's claws and emerge victorious. They were too sharp and the strikes were too vicious. Already its pelt had been torn in at least seven places, and although the big cat knew not the number of wounds that it had suffered, it certainly felt the severity of its wounds. In spite of the pain, its hunger spurred it onward, but the predator knew that it had this last chance to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Amos did not sidestep this advance, for he knew that he would be caught even if he tried. He saw the determination in the hunter's eyes, and he understood that this was the deciding moment of the battle. Instead or sidestepping, Amos braced himself and whipped his tail around his body, entangling one of the beast's paws as it swiped at his chest. The creature bore down on him and Amos turned with the cat's momentum, throwing it down onto the hard stone. Its hind legs curled up to tear out Amos' belly, but the Surrassi danced sideways instead of collapsing on the cat, away from flailing hind legs. He hoisted it up by its paws, ignoring its wide snapping jaws, and slammed the beast back down against the ground. He heard the crowd cheering and goading them on. More importantly, however, Amos felt himself drowning in the heat which was pulsing through his veins like a wildfire.

There was hardly a coherent remaining in Amos' head. The instant that this proud, feline hunter had stepped into the arena, Amos had unknowingly been drawn deep within himself, beyond his identity as a soldier, back to his ancient heritage as the Surrassi predator. He was the beast that had dominated Xixisax through might and sheer force of will. He was the animal that had risen above his competitors and seized his soul from the blood-soaked maw of Mother Guunet, the patron of the wild. Utter isolation had eroded whatever chains civilization had put upon his base instincts. Even Amos iron discipline and extensive training could not overcome the lusty fire that consumed him in that moment.

It burned away the sorrow, regret, and empty dreams. All that mattered was the fight and the sight of blood. The musky scent of his enemy filled his nostrils as Amos drew a harsh breath and hissed his satisfaction in the face of the lesser creature's futile efforts to rise. For a moment, Amos was free to do what he liked, and his only desire was to bury his fangs in the flesh of his struggling enemy, to taste its blood, to feel the life bleed away beneath his claws.

Amos wrestled with the cat for a moment, then dragged its powerful paw out of the fight with his tail. He took the other leg in a vice grip, wrapped his long fingers around the beast's snout, and sank his fangs into its vulnerable neck, just as he had done to the Lizard. When it tried to bring its hind legs up to push him away he swung his leg up and straddled the creature, stretching it out on the sand as he tore its throat out with his teeth. Instead of pulling away, however, he dug in further. Hot blood gushed into his mouth, and Amos purred luxuriously, rapturously. Cries of excitement and cheers from the crowd turned to a mixture of disgust and sadistic delight as Amos began to gorge himself on his fallen opponent, who continued to struggle weakly with the last of its strength.

When they finally pulled him from the dead beast, Amos' front was drenched with blood, and he was mindless with it. He struggled thoughtlessly against them until his collar finally broke through the red haze with white-hot pain, and he was put down onto the stone, where he writhed pitifully before thousands of spectators.

Amos gasped for breath when the pain subsided. He was hauled to his feet and removed from the arena and doused with frigid water. He didn't remember how he got back to his apartment, but he did remember the uncertainty in Hairy's posture when he walked through the door. The other slaves regarded him warily and kept their distance whenever he walked the halls. Somehow, they had seen Amos lose himself, knew that this was something else, a different creature than before.

Amos might have known the depravity of warfare. The battlefield was at once the ideal contest of might and a terrible travesty; it is both a marvel and a horror. In a struggle for life or death, people turn to things that they would never consider had they remained in their right mind, this Amos knew intimately, for his own actions when he was consumed by battle tended toward savagery, but the things that the Batarians forced upon their slave-warriors opened his eyes to new depths of horror. In battle, although soldiers might give themselves over to their base instincts, and commit terrible deeds, they return to themselves eventually, as their duty demands, yet here in the arena, there was no expectation of honor or civility. In fact it was preferable for Amos to remain consumed by that blood-lust, so that his guilt would never become more than a whisper in the back of the mind. The loss of self, the descent into madness, was worse than any war crime that Amos had ever heard of.

And he couldn't stop it.

Amos wished that he could say he held himself above the savagery. He wished that he had dealt honorably with all of his opponents as he was brought out again and again and pitted against creatures of all sorts, each more vicious than the last, gradually upgrading from beasts to slaves, then to warriors. But he didn't. Amos found that when he was treated like a beast, known as a beast, and feared as a beast he began to act according to the expectations of his captors, he sank below the worst of his own kind on Xixisax, fulfilled his father's worst nightmares.

They told him that he was a mindless killer, and they rewarded him for it, and so he slew his enemies. He did not do so in the way that Amos the Soldier would have, by fighting honorably and ending their lives swiftly, without pain. He mangled them, tore them limb from limb. He tasted their blood and sank his fangs into their flesh. He let the taste, the scent, and the sounds of their screams take him away from his visceral disappointment, his aching frustration.

If any of his people had seen him, they would have decried him as a mad-tooth. Any Surrassi who resorted to using their teeth in a confrontation with their enemies were considered to be honor-less. Most of the time they were executed like a rabid dog. But Amos was an exile, far from his people, and those who witnessed his savagery cheered for it. When they stood Amos upon the sands, they were not seeking Amos the Soldier. They only wanted his claws and his teeth. They continued to call him by another name; it was a primitive name which was more fitting his monstrous state. Thakrus. It meant nothing to him, but that was better than the name his father had given him because Amos did not want to know what his father would say if he could see his son in these pits.

Despite the deterioration of his mind, Thakrus knew that he had grown in strength and swiftness. He was in excellent physical condition, the best he had ever achieved. Continuous battle had hardened him. He was stronger and faster than his enemies, he was the uncontested king of the arena, and at first even his captors feared him, even despite the collar around his neck. They resorted to pitting him against multiple opponents, since no single creature could stand against him and survive, and the dark, sickly pride that squirmed in Tharus' chest when he took them down further drove the last remaining vestiges of civilized thought from his mind.

All semblance of honor fled from him, and he made no effort to find his voice. Thakrus found it inconsequential; he had nothing to say to the creatures he killed.

At some point Thakrus had gotten into a fight with the other slaves, killing several of them before the guards could split them up. For that he was thrown into a dark cell beneath the arena and left there until he was taken to spill blood in the arena. He never saw Hairy, or any of the other fighters, again. Not until he was forced to kill them, several days later, on the burning sands of the gladiatorial court.

By watching the people who left the catacombs and those who returned, Thakrus eventually learned that these fights were not meant to always end in death. It made sense, at last. Fighters were expensive to buy and expensive to train, so it was best if the entertainment could be found without losing a valuable asset, but by the time Thakrus had figured this out he no longer had the desire to spare his opponents.

They stepped out to face him, and his captors knew by this point that their collared beast never relented in battle, so Thakrus killed them as he was expected to. Eventually, most of his opponents were pitiful creatures who were hardly even fit to die in the arena. They were slaves who had outlived their purpose or criminals who had been sentenced to death. It was all sport to the Batarians, watching these executions, and as the fights began to bleed together in memory, it became sport to Thakrus as well.

When the real fights came, when Thakrus actually had to compete, the arenas were larger and more prestigious in accordance with his fame. The Batarians were not afraid of showing him off as a beast, as a mindless thing, less than them in every way. There was no hint of civilization within him now, nothing that might clue them in to what had been done to Xixisax. Amos was taken to new places in dark cars and long, impressive warships, he was put on display and marched in parades. Thakrus basked in their praise, behind the bars of his cage.

It was only at night, when silence fell upon the cages, when Thakrus curled up alone on the cold metal benches, that he remembered who Amos was. He thought of the days when he could walk freely through green pastures and bright cities, when he could find comfort in his mother's arms, when he could rely on his father's wisdom without fear, when he had not been utterly alone. As darkness closed in around him, he became acutely aware of the collar around his neck, and each of the tortures which had been inflicted upon him by the Batarians replayed itself endlessly in his mind. He knew that, no matter his resolve at the beginning, the collar had dominated him. It had taken him and broken him. It was a symbol of everything that had changed. As twisted as he was, the only comfort he could find was in violence. He fantasized that he was tearing out the throats of his oppressors and rising above them, reaching out for the stars and returning home. No. Not home. Thakrus couldn't bear the thought of facing his parents in this state. The Void itself would be his destination, his absolution.

He dreamed of spending the rest of his years among the infinite vistas of the abyss, anonymous, and that sustained him through the darkest of nights.


	12. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Gimp must have thought that he was becoming accustomed to captivity, for he gradually began to let down his guard. As time passed, Thakrus' keepers seemed to only remember that he was a savage when they were making money betting on the battles he fought. The collar was used less and less to keep him in line outside of the arena. Thakrus played along with them, easing their minds, and soon they were allowing him free range of their ships during transit. Where was he going to run, after all, while they were in the depths of space?

They were fools not to notice how he watched them, like a hawk watches his prey.

Gimp carried the remote on him when they were on a planet, but the Captain of their Void-ship kept it when they were on board. That small, black, rectangular remote. Thakrus became intimately familiar with every facet of its function. He watched when it changed hands. He stalked the person who carried it. He knew their scent, their voice, their habits.

One day, when they boarded a ship in preparation for another journey, the beast decided that it was time. It wouldn't be hard now, for the Batarians had let their guard down. Somehow, they had forgotten that he was a thing to be feared, and Thakrus would teach them what a mistake they had made in their arrogance. He was patient, for he knew by now that it usually took one to four days to make a journey to a new arena. On the second day, a perfect opportunity presented itself.

Thakrus could usually tell what was happening on board the ship in a general sense. He had never bothered to interpret the Batarian language, since they spoke several dialects and it didn't appeal to him in the slightest. He knew that they had come under attack from another Void-ship because he paid attention to the sounds of the struggling reactor core and the bustling mayhem that was taking place outside the slave quarters. He felt the ship rock under repeated blows from an unknown assailant.

Thakrus figured he was hardly likely to get another chance like this one. He knew that the ship's controls were mostly contained in a single room at the front of the ship, so he emerged from the slave quarters and found that his usual escorts were nowhere to be found. It was likely that they had manned another station during the attack.

The hunter listened to the sounds of the ship. Footsteps reverberated through the metal hull spectacularly well, and after countless hours spent on board this sort of vessel Thakrus had perfected the art of locating the source of such vibrations. Batarian Void-ships were built with open spaces and segmented walkways, and every compartment was capable of sustaining itself in case of a hull breach. The slave quarters were basically a re-purposed cargo hold, and were located near the engines.

Thakrus walked towards the closed hatch and waited. The approaching group stopped briefly, and the door hissed open, allowing a slight chill to brush across his fur as the atmospheric pressure equalized between the engineering deck and the corridor. The Batarians were wearing their armor and carrying their firearms, two of them wielding a sidearm and one of them holding a squat carbine in a loose grip across his chest. All three of them froze when they saw a dark shadow with burning crimson eyes blocking their way. Thakrus growled low in his chest and grabbed the rifleman by the neck, holding the carbine in place with his other hand as he dragged the suddenly terrified Batarian towards him. The other two lifted their guns and fired, but their shots merely smacked into the shields of their compatriot. Their panic caused them to fire too quickly, and after a second the sidearms were hissing as they desperately attempted to vent the heat which had built up along the short barrel.

Thakrus wasted no time with theatrics. He crushed the Batarian's throat in his fist and tore the carbine from his hands, throwing the dying creature at his compatriot even as he brought the squat firearm to his shoulder and mowed down the only one who was still standing with fully automatic fire. The Batarian's shields flared and took four shots, and sparks flew as the slivers of metal skipped across the interior of the Void-ship's hull, but a moment later blood spattered across the walls and the crewman fell back. His pistol dropped from nerveless fingers.

The third was beginning to regain his footing, but Thakrus stepped forward to kick his sidearm aside, putting the carbine directly against the creature's visor. The shields didn't flare when he died.

Thakrus easily hoisted one of the corpses up with his left hand and wielded the carbine like a sub-machine gun or an automatic pistol with his right. He slammed the butt of the weapon into the control pad to close the hatch behind him, listening to the sound of his racing heart.

He was near the reactor core. He could feel the low _thrum, thrum_ of the big pulsing machine in his chest. Calling upon his innate sense of direction, Thakrus remembered that he needed to get up to the first deck in order to reach the bridge.

That meant finding an elevator.

The nearest elevator was located outside the engine room.

Calling on soldiering skills that he had not used for many months, Thakrus swept ruthlessly through engineering, killing anything that so much as twitched. Some of them returned fire, but the meat shield that he was carrying in front of him proved to be extremely effective, especially since the shields on the Batarian armor continued to recharge whenever Thakrus had time to breathe.

Listening to the sounds of voices and footsteps echoing through the corridors, Thakrus knew that there were three people still on this deck. Through the door directly in front of him. The elevator was through the hatch to his right. Taking aim at the control panel for the door before him, Thakrus put four rounds through the delicate electronics, watching as blast seals lowered, locking the remaining three in their compartment.

Thakrus didn't know that the emergency protocol could be overridden from the bridge, but he wasn't waiting around to find out. Stepping through into the adjoining corridor, he closed the door behind him and blasted that console as well. As he approached the elevator doors, his arm began to tire so he took a moment to rest.

He didn't have long before he heard the distinctive sound of the elevator grinding down its shaft. With a small sigh he hefted his macabre shield by the collar of its dark armor and shoved the carbine under the limp right arm of the dead Batarian. The instant that the elevator doors opened, Thakrus opened fire, measuring his shots in short bursts and bending his knees to reduce his profile.

They seemed to be expecting an ambush, because a hail of gunfire returned from the open elevator. Thakrus had limited cover in the form of the dead crewman, however, and the Batarians in the elevator weren't so lucky. Standing so close together was also a disadvantage, although an unavoidable one. Ricochet off their barriers merely sent the round into the barrier of the man next to the original target, reducing shield strength for multiple targets.

Thakrus hissed in irritation as he was deafened by the overpowering cacophony of weapon discharge. Bullets were smacking into his meat shield, tearing armor and flesh into ribbons, but Thakrus was confident that he would win this firefight.

It only lasted about six seconds. Five dead Batarians were laying in a blood-soaked elevator, and Thakrus remained standing, holding what amounted to little more than ground beef. Discarding the useless corpse, Thakrus stalked forward, stepping among the dead crewmen.

One of them was still reaching for his weapon, and was rewarded with a bullet to the back of his skull for his determined efforts. Having no idea how to read the elevator's controls, the massive Surrassi could only hope that they had organized it sensibly and the top deck was the uppermost button on the panel.

As the elevator began to move Thakrus stacked the six bodies in front of the doors and crouched behind them. The barriers, armor, and flesh of the crewmen would be an effective barricade against any sort of defense that had been assembled in the corridor outside the elevator.

Although his ears were ringing, Thakrus regained some of his hearing and was able to tell that their Void-ship no longer had control of its engines. The familiar vibration in the metal floors and walls was gone.

Briefly Thakrus wondered if the people attacking the vessel were any better than the Batarians, and he contemplated killing them as well if they decided to board the vessel instead of merely blowing it to smithereens. Deciding he didn't care at the moment, he settled in and continued to wait.

These elevators were _excruciatingly_ slow.

Finally, the doors opened, and Thakrus was happy to see that there wasn't a full platoon of Batarian guardsman waiting for him. Easily stepping over his makeshift barricade, the Surrassi hoisted a new meat shield and continued to do what he did best.

The moment Thakrus stepped onto the bridge with his carbine blazing he knew that he had made a mistake. His collar reminded him of its presence with an unbearable jolt of power that forced his entire body to jerk, and he only barely kept a hold of the dead crewman. He felt the bullets striking his barriers, but he was helpless to do anything but fight against the involuntary convulsions that were wracking his body.

This was _not_ how this was going to end. Roaring furiously, Thakrus forced the carbine up against his own neck, angling the shot towards his ear, and pulled the trigger. The pain ended. Laughing victoriously, Thakrus crouched and opened fire on the bridge.

The defenders had to stop firing and let their guns cool, and they had taken cover behind the control panels of the Void-ship. That was fine with Thakrus, he aimed for as many glowing screens that he could see, throwing the bridge into darkness and causing at least six different alarms to start blaring throughout the ship. Gimp swung out in the open, pointing his pathetic little barb-shooter, and Thakrus took great pleasure in blasting the creature into a bloody smear. He may have held onto the trigger a little too long for a single target, but it was worth the extra heat.

When his gun began clicking and hissing, Thakrus stepped back through the hatch and closed the door.

That was when the pain hit him. It felt like there was a knife buried in his skull just below his ear. Staggering under the sudden onslaught of agony and fatigue, Thakrus reached up and touched the spot with shaking fingers. When he looked down they were dark with his own crimson blood.

Thakrus slumped against the wall, holding onto his stolen carbine by the tips of his claws. The last thing he saw before awareness left him was the elevator doors opening once again and a pair of boots clacking against the deck.

* * *

"Well, what is it, do you think?" Doctor Orlov asked, staring down at the bleeding creature. Taylor, one of the newer members of the boarding party, had carried the beast into the _Jolly Roger's_ medical bay, much to the confusion of the ship's doctor and his assistant.

It was rather large. Were it not for its tail and rather feline attributes, the humans would have mistaken it for a gorilla.

Taylor rubbed the back of his neck. "I don't actually know. It was fighting with the Batarian crew when we arrived."

"There have been rumors..." The doctor hummed softly and turned the creature's neck so that he could see its injury. A thin gash had been cut through the flesh, into the bone just behind the alien's elegant ear. Activating his omni-tool, Orlov scanned the area several times and sighed. "You should take him to the brig," he decided at last. "The Captain can determine what happens to him later."

"The brig?" Lauren asked incredulously. "The poor thing is injured and unconscious and you're going to throw it in the brig?"

Doctor Orlov smiled patronizingly at his young assistant. "Do you see how large this creature is? It's half again as tall and three times as heavy as the next biggest, baddest killer on this ship. He could awaken at any moment, and then what do you think would happen? I cannot use sedatives or any other medicines on him until I know that there won't be an adverse reaction. Even medi-gel is a risk without more information on his physiology. The only thing I could do for him would be to suture his wound, but I am sure he will survive regardless."

"I'll stitch him up them, if you won't do it," Lauren declared, narrowing her striking gray eyes at the graying man.

The doctor sighed. "You can tend to its injuries _in the brig_ , then, at your own risk. If it turns out to be violent, I'm not certain we could save you, but we cannot allow it free reign of the vessel. I fear the damage such a rampage could cause. Mr. Taylor, if you would be so kind?"

Jacob slid his arms under the alien's armpits and Doctor Orlov took hold of its legs. Together they managed to lift it off the hospital bed. Lauren watched them shuffle out of the medical bay with an exasperated expression on her face before she sighed and collected the materials she would need.

They put the alien in one of the empty cells. The cargo holds of the frigate had been refitted into a brig with four separate cells. Each cell was big enough for two or three people, complete with a toilet and a dirty old cot. The room that they chose for the alien had a bench against one wall and a few large metal crates serving as a bunk.

"Can you put him on the crates?" she asked when she stepped into the cell, watching as Jacob and Doctor Orlov discussed something in quiet tones.

They nodded and moved the alien again. This time they were much more careful about its neck.

"Stay outside the door while she works," Doctor Orlov told Jacob. "If you hear anything, feel free to intervene."

"No," Lauren said suddenly. "I will call out if I need you to rescue me."

"Lauren..."

She hardened her expression. "I am sure the creature will be disoriented when it wakes up. There's no need for Jacob to barge in guns blazing unnecessarily. I will call if I need help. Besides, we can't allow it to get through the door if it's as dangerous as you think it is."

The doctor simply shrugged as if to say, 'it's your funeral.' He departed quickly after that. Lauren opened her medical kit and placed it on the large crate next to her patient's leg.

"Are you sure about this?" Jacob asked as he stepped back to the door. "It did a lot of damage on the batarian ship…"

Lauren nodded. "It's the right thing to do."

With a nod, the dark man stepped back into the hall and the door closed behind him. Lauren took a deep breath and rummaged in her case for a needle, but she stopped when he held it between her fingers. Before she got to that…

Lauren reached up and fumbled with the mangled metal collar for a moment, searching for a clasp. She found two small protrusions at the back which would have been difficult for the alien to reach himself and pressed down on them. Immediately the collar snapped open, but not before imparting a shock to her fingers. She yelped and yanked her hand back, shaking her wrist.

Her entire arm up to her elbow was numb. Swearing quietly, Lauren pushed the collar off the crate and massaged her numb fingers. Eventually she regained enough mobility to pick up the needle again, and this time she buckled down and got to work.

Thakrus could smell his own blood. His heart clenched painfully in his chest, and his head pounded. The pain was severe enough that he thought he could hear the ache pulsing at his temples. _Thud. Thud. Thud._ He slid his tail across a cool metal surface and sucked air into his nostrils.

His eyes felt like they were glued shut.

 _Thud. Thud. Thud._

His body jerked like it was made of gelatin. Sensation washed over his dazed mind. Cold. The sound of a heartbeat, fast and quiet, unfamiliar. His own blood roaring in his ears. Intermittent aches squirming down his bones. The smell of earth, warm and rich and the scent of a warm summer breeze.

Thakrus focused on the nearby heartbeat. The potential threat focused him, it brought his mind back from the depths of incomprehensible feelings. His eyelids were heavy, but he forced them open and turned his face in the direction of the sound and the scent of earth and summer.

A Rutash was standing beside him. The feeling of frigid ice seeped through his fur and into the skin of his back. Thakrus recognized that feeling as the insistent chill of an operating table.

Thakrus could smell his own blood. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a bloody gauze bandage next to his head.

His muscles were stubbornly refusing to respond appropriately to his brain.

Thakrus saw that the Rutash's hands were stained with his blood.

Immediately, he tried to hoist himself onto his feet and attack. All he succeeded in doing was rolling halfway onto his side and collapsing pathetically into a heap on the hard floor. He heard a yelp and felt small hands pressing down on his shoulders.

He snarled and heaved, slamming his back against the side of the metal table. The Rutash retreated immediately, holding up its hands and turning its face and eyes away. Thakrus narrowed his eyes and growled low in his chest, struggling to place his feet.

Something was telling him that the creature wasn't trying to hurt him. That didn't seem to matter very much right now.

Thakrus could smell his own blood.

It was fortunate for the Rutash that he was as weak as a newborn at the moment.

Eventually he fell back and slapped his tail against the floor in frustration. The alien jumped slightly at the sound, but the sharp sting further sharpened his senses. With nothing else to do he ran his eyes up the Rutash's body from its toes to the top of its head, trying to determine its strength.

The creature had small feet and lithe legs, hips that were wider than its waist, and a bust which suggested female gender. Wiry arms, relatively narrow shoulders, and an elegant neck reinforced the idea.

But you never know with aliens.

Regardless of its gender, Thakrus determined that the creature wasn't much of a threat. It looked…soft. Even in his weakened state he had no doubt that he could subdue the creature if it tried anything. Its throat looked pliable, and its limbs weak. He breathed in through his nose and was struck by the cocktail of strong scents hanging in the air once again.

Blood, earth, and that strange flowery sweetness.

The Rutash was creeping forward, murmuring quietly with its strange voice. Thakrus determined once and for all that the creature must be female when he heard the sound, for he knew of no male creature that would coo in such a _motherly_ fashion. His growl returned when she strayed too close, despite her attempt at comfort, and he shifted his position against the table, glaring into her fascinating gray eyes.

She froze when she heard the sound, standing perfectly still. Her eyes remained focused somewhere on his chest. Thakrus saw that she was aware of the danger she was in. The difference in strength between them was mutually understood.

The scents in the air changed. Slightly sour. Fear. It was a disagreeable aroma.

The throbbing in his head was receding. Thakrus took a deep breath, felt his chest swell and collapse, felt rejuvenating coolness seep through his muscles. His throat itched, dry. His growl subsided into silence with a gravelly rumble.

He wasn't going to eat her, he decided. At least not right away.

The female was very close to him now, moving slowly, persistently. She had the gauze bandage in her right hand now, and was reaching towards his face.

Thakrus could smell his own blood. It was running down his neck, matting the fur on his shoulder. It was on her hands. It soaked the bandage. There was a pool of it on the table beside his head. Then she touched him and the pain awakened his barely suppressed instincts.

Before his mind could catch up with his body, he had surged to his feet, pressing against the alien's soft, relenting body as he drove her back in two shaking strides, seizing her wrist in one hand and her throat in the other. His fingers nearly encompassed her entire neck. When her back hit the wall, the air rushed from her mouth in a _huff,_ washing over his face. A rumbling growl vibrated in his chest as her free hand pushed pointlessly against his gut. He felt her throat working under his fingers.

Looking down at her eyes, Thakrus pressed his claws against her skin and felt her stiffen. The black part of the colored gems grew. She was either paralyzed with fear or intentionally holding perfectly still. Motionless.

It was a good decision. If she had so much as considered the possibility of fighting, he would have ended her. As it was, his mind was able to catch up with him and his grip relented slightly. Thakrus wouldn't kill her if she wasn't going to fight. Everything about her posture spoke of submission. And he wasn't hungry, no matter how delicious she smelled.

She swallowed nervously. They stood in that awkward embrace for a long half-second as Thakrus wrestled with a resurgence of long-forgotten memories.

He released her neck and reached up to touch the side of her face.

She flinched when she felt his claws trailing across her cheek.

Some deep, forgotten feelings clawed to the forefront of the beast's mind. She was so alike...it was _so close._ But it wasn't the same, it wasn't Surrassi, wasn't his mother.

Thakrus suddenly stepped away from her, watching as her feet hit the ground and she stumbled slightly, gasping with relief and slowly regaining her balance. Her eyes flicked up to his and he growled halfheartedly, pleased when she lowered her gaze quickly, ducked her head. He wasn't sure why the Rutashes had such familiar body language, but it made it easier to communicate in this instance. Stepping back, he sat down on the cool metal crate that she had been using as an operating table and turned his head obligingly, displaying his injury to her.

He could feel hot blood seeping from his wound now. It had already run down the side of his neck, into the fur above his collarbone. The Rutash female approached, more confidently now, but she paused when she raised the bandage.

Thakrus put one hand on her left shoulder and the other on her hip in case he had to push her away. Also to feel her warmth, the first nonviolent contact that he'd experienced for as long as he could remember, which was admittedly not as long as one might expect. He didn't see any weapons on her body—she didn't even have claws—but it was better safe than sorry.

Her breath hitched for a moment, then she gingerly dabbed at his wound. It felt like someone had driven an iron spike through Thakrus' skull, but he managed to remain perfectly still. The only outward sign of the pain was a slight tightening of his grip on her body and the growl rumbling in his chest.

Thakrus distracted himself trying to decipher the various scents that the Rutash gave off. Surrassi and most animals on Xixisax released various pheromones in response to stimuli in their environment. Most of these signals were extremely subtle, but they provided insight that words and gestures could not. For example, most prey creatures release a sour smelling scent when they are terrified, which Thakrus suspected was a shared trait between the creatures of Xixisax and the Rutash. This alerts other nearby herd members that there is danger nearby. It lingers in the air, warning any creature who comes across it.

Everything about aliens was, well, _alien._ Their appearance, their facial expressions, their body language, their eyes, and even their smells. Even though Thakrus had detected the sour aroma when the Rutash was presumably frightened, he had no way of knowing if the creature was aware of it herself, or even if it served any purpose at all for the alien.

Hairy hadn't shared very many of the scents that Thakrus detected in the air with the Rutash female. Those memories were rather hazy and distant, however, and Thakrus had no desire to ponder them more deeply. There was only the present, the creature before him, standing in his hands. And the scent of his own blood, the throbbing pain of the needle, the sound of her heartbeat.

After a few minutes the female turned her shoulders and moved her arm suddenly. Thakrus halted her motions effortlessly and was in the process of pulling her forward to limit the effectiveness of whatever weapon she was drawing when he saw that she was reaching towards a small tray of medical supplies instead. He froze, and she swayed in place, looking at him with wide, startled eyes, nearly crushed against his chest.

Thakrus loosened his hold on her arm and saw her wince. What a fragile creature. More slowly, she discarded the blood-soaked bandage and found a clean one.

He wondered why she even cared to tend to his injury. No one had ever cared before. No one had ever come this close to him.

It annoyed him to allow her to work, but it pleased him as well. He was gratified by the fact that another creature, alien or not, would serve him in such a fashion, but he despised showing weakness, even one as small as the cut behind his ear. Conflicted, he stayed still and allowed the female to work.

When she returned to her task, Thakrus was reminded of the way Amos' mother used to tend to his scrapes and bruises from childish escapades in the grove of swaying rutena trees behind the house. He closed his eyes for a long moment and shifted his hand from her hard hip bone to her waist. She felt warm and inviting, even through the cloth that she wore over her skin in the place of a fur pelt. She was such a small thing...

She paused and Thakrus opened his eyes. Suddenly he was struck with the thought that he couldn't feel his collar pressing against his neck. Relief and pleasure surged from a deep place in his chest and Thakrus purred indulgently, releasing her arm to touch the side of his neck. It really was gone.

The bleeding must have stopped. The female put her bandages away and stepped carefully away from him, despite his lingering hands. Thakrus stretched his neck and felt the skin around his injury tug uncomfortably.

Stitches? Those would itch in a few hours. He watched the Rutash pack away her supplies, following the way her hair swayed as she used her hands. She had a long mane of dark brown hair, tied at the back of her head to keep it away from her face. A few strands had slipped from whatever she had used to tie her hair, and they dangled around her ears and over the smooth skin of her forehead. He wondered how far down her back the luscious pelt extended. He wanted to bury his face in it, fall asleep with her scent coiling around him. He wanted at least one night at peace, without fear of nightmares.

She didn't seem so alien to him now. Just...different. Different yet the same.

Thakrus thought she was a curious creature. She left him alone, stepping out of the small room. Thakrus heard the door lock behind her, but he wasn't bothered. He was used to that sort of treatment. Looking around, Thakrus saw blankets nestled in the corner and tried to make himself comfortable, focusing on the lingering scent of a summer breeze.

Lauren sighed in relief the moment the door closed behind her. She could feel Jacob's eyes watching her as she gathered herself, and after a moment she flashed him a smile. "All done."

"You alright? I thought I heard some struggling," he replied.

"Fine," Lauren said quickly, forcing down the impulse to touch her throat. "Like I said earlier, he was disoriented when he woke up."

The Corsair was giving her a skeptical look and she pouted at him. "Look, if anything had gone wrong I would have called you. I have to get back to the medical bay; there might be injuries from the boarding party."

"They got back a half hour ago," Jacob informed her, raising his eyebrow. "Lose track of time?"

Lauren blinked. "Yeah," she muttered. "Thanks for sticking around for so long."

The big man, who suddenly seemed small in comparison to the alien in the cell, shrugged and Lauren stepped past him quickly. After returning the medical supplies to the infirmary she visited the bathroom to wash her hands and was delighted to find it deserted. On a frigate this size there was usually at least one person in the stalls or taking a shower, but Lauren was glad for the privacy as she tugged her collar aside and stared at the beginnings of an impressive bruise.

She was certain that her wrist, shoulder, and hip would have similar bruises. Just from holding her with his hands! She shuddered and shut the water off. Someone was bound to notice. Cursing, she untied her hair and shook her head to let it tumble around her shoulders.

With a last lingering glance at the mirror, Lauren found her bunk in the dormitories and laid down, asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow.


	13. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

"Tell me what you think," Captain Crow said tersely, taking a seat next to Doctor Orlov. The graying chief medical officer of the _Jolly Roger_ was watching the security feed from the brig and a recording of earlier footage.

"I think Lauren was a fool," he replied, watching as the creature hoisted her off her feet with a brawny hand on her neck. "The beast could have killed her."

"But it didn't," the captain pointed out. "If it was mindless, it wouldn't have hesitated."

Begrudgingly, the doctor nodded. "You're right. It appears to have a modicum of intelligence, no matter what the Batarians have claimed about that species. No one took the conspiracies seriously when this sort of creature first appeared in their arenas. But if the Batarians have discovered a sentient species without informing the Citadel Council..."

"That's something the Alliance needs to know about," Captain Crow finished. "Of course, we can't just drop the creature off somewhere with a message saying: 'from your friendly neighborhood Corsair.'"

"I am sure I can develop a sedative that is compatible with the alien's physiology if I was able to take some thorough scans and tissue samples," Doctor Orlov said. "After that, it would be a simple matter of re-purposing one of the stolen Batarian shuttles to make it look like the beast escaped on its own."

"An alien with no idea how to speak, let alone pilot a ship, on a Batarian-made shuttle deep within Alliance space. That's not suspicious at all," Captain Crow joked skeptically.

"We could use one of the prisoners from the last raid as a pilot. I am sure that the alien could break any restraint that we can dream up. What will the Alliance think if they find a Batarian shuttle with a dead pilot and a rebellious slave?" Doctor Orlov reasoned.

Captain Crow laughed. "No one will fall for that. The Hegemony doesn't transport slaves on shuttles, especially shuttles with FTL capability. And why in the hell would a Batarian pilot his shuttle into Alliance territory?"

"Nothing leads back to us. Even if it is suspicious, if it doesn't implicate us then we're in the clear. Besides, it is better than keeping it on board the _Jolly Roger._ You just said that we can't contact the Alliance directly," Doctor Orlov argued. "Worst case scenario, nobody ever finds the shuttle and we don't have to trouble ourselves with the alien."

"Yeah, then the Alliance will never know that the Batarians are potentially enslaving an entire race of gorilla-cat things for dubious reasons," Crow retorted dryly. He sighed. "Your idea is a good one. We can always hang around out of sight to make sure that the Hegemony doesn't pick him up again."

"I am glad you agree," Doctor Orlov replied with a thin smile. "I will get to work on the sedative immediately."

* * *

Lauren sifted through another box of looted medical supplies with half a mind. Her hands ghosted over faded labels and tarnished metal blades, but her eyes stared unseeing into the depths of the small crate. She kept thinking back to the alien in the brig, to the myriad scars that marred his brown and white pelt. She was so deep in her ruminations that she almost missed Doctor Orlov when he packed up a small bag of supplies and stood up.

"Where are you going?" she asked suddenly when she saw the door open out of the corner of her eye. Shaking her head to clear it, she set the stolen crate aside and stood up, rolling her stiff neck and listening to the bones popping.

"I have to get some scans from our guest," he replied, watching her with his intense blue eyes. His calculating stare made her fidget where she stood.

"I'll go," she blurted, wondering why she would volunteer for such a thing.

Doctor Orlov seemed similarly startled. "Why would you want to go back?"

"I just...I think it would be easier for me to do it. I am a familiar face," Lauren argued. It was a better answer than 'I don't know.' The stern man peered at her for a long second before nodding his head.

"Maybe you're right," he said slowly. "I will come with you this time and stand outside the door. I saw what happened before."

Lauren blinked. The cameras! "I see," she said neutrally. "I don't think he knew what he was doing."

"The creature seemed to know exactly what it was doing," Orlov retorted curtly. "It moves with the grace of a killer. I have no doubt that it would have snapped your neck in the blink of an eye if you'd so much as twitched. It probably would have eaten you then. You've seen the footage from the arenas."

"Whatever. That didn't happen, and you need your scans. Let's get this over with," Lauren replied, wondering why she was feeling defensive about her mentor's comments. She snatched the bag of supplies from his arms and listened to him drone on about the sort of scans he wanted her to take.

When they reached the brig, Lauren took a steadying breath. Why was her heart racing? "Do you need a blood sample?" she asked, keeping her voice level.

"No, I already have his blood," Orlov replied.

The door opened, and she stepped into the makeshift cell. She jumped like a startled kitten when the door hissed closed on its own, then cursed herself for her skittishness. The cell was lit by a single line of LED bulbs embedded in the ceiling, but there were still shadows in the corners.

The cot and the crates had been moved. The blood-streaked crates were sat next to each other beside the door, making a corridor with the wall on the left side of the cell, and Lauren could see that the cot had been dismantled and shoved in a shadowy corner on the opposite side of the makeshift divider. The alien was watching her from a sitting position with narrowed crimson eyes. She felt the weight of his stare and asked herself why she had volunteered for this.

"Hi," she muttered, swallowing in spite of the tightness in her throat. There was something distinctly terrifying about this alien in particular. Turians had a similar air about them, but Lauren wasn't petrified around Turians, so she didn't know what had gotten into her.

Other than the fact that a Turian had never lifted her up by her neck and slammed her against a wall with one hand. And Turians weren't quite as large…hell, nothing was as large as this creature. A krogan, perhaps.

Smoothly, the colossal cat-like alien rose to its feet and loomed over her. Even with a wide metal crate separating them, Lauren felt like he could pounce at her at any moment. His eyes dragged across her face before dropping to the bag that she held in her hands.

She lifted it up and set the bag down on the crate. Before she could open it to reassure the alien that there was nothing harmful inside, his huge, clawed hand shot out and pulled the satchel into his arms. It looked comically small in the palms of his hands.

Fumbling with it for the briefest moment, the alien inspected it thoroughly, sniffing it and yanking the zipper open to dump its contents onto the crate. Lauren almost protested the rough treatment of the medical scanners, but she bit her tongue when she remembered who she would have been admonishing.

It's a good policy to avoid snapping at people who are almost twice your size. Especially people with sharp claws and long fangs.

The now empty satchel was placed onto the crate and the scanners were individually scrutinized. The way that the creature looked at them made Lauren think of a chimpanzee with a keyboard for a moment, but when his eyes flicked from the instruments to the woman herself she changed her estimation of his actions. He was probably trying to determine if any of them could be used as a weapon.

Some of the scanners were heavy enough that they could probably do some serious damage if they were thrown. Especially by an alien gorilla-cat thing. Lauren bit her bottom lip and prepared to duck, although she figured it would be futile.

Nothing was thrown. Eventually the scanners were all piled up haphazardly on the crate and the alien pushed them towards her. Stepping back, the big furry beast stood with his arms dangling by his sides. Lauren saw his fingers flex and knew that his claws were poised to cut and tear at a moment's notice.

She supposed it was a safety precaution for the big alien. How charming.

Ruthlessly smothering the part of her that was disappointed in the fact that he wouldn't be holding her round the waist while she scanned him, because that was hysteria talking, Lauren chose the first scanner and swallowed her trepidation.

Most of the scans didn't require her to be very close to him, so it was fine that she was standing on the opposite side of the crate. Several of them required her to lean forward uncomfortably, but that was a better alternative than trying to walk around his little barricade. She felt that it wouldn't be a welcome intrusion.

Once she was finished she packed the scanners back into the bag and hesitated. She didn't really want to turn her back to the alien in order to activate the door, but she didn't want to overtly display her unease by fumbling around for the controls behind her back.

"Doctor," she said. "Open the door."

She stepped out of the cell. When the door closed she released a breath she didn't know that she had been holding.

"His caution complicates things," Orlov muttered, taking the bag from her and looking her over. "You alright? You're shaking."

"Yeah," Lauren blustered, shrugging off his concern. "I'm good. What do you mean by easier? It isn't like he was ever unarmed, anyway."

"You're right, I forgot to consider the fact that the creature has its claws. We're going to have to sedate the alien to move it to the shuttle, but I am certainly not getting anywhere near it with a syringe," Doctor Orlov opined. "I suppose I'll have to design it to fit in a tranquilizer gun of some kind. Unless..."

"You're going to tranquilize him?" Lauren asked sharply. "That doesn't seem conducive to building a positive relationship with a new alien species."

"Yes, well, neither is getting torn to ribbons," Orlov retorted dryly. "Anyway, my other idea is pure foolishness."

"What is it?"

"No," the doctor denied her. His eyes showed a rare spark of mirth. "If I tell you, you'll rush off and do it anyways because you're foolish too."

Scoffing at her mentor, Lauren turned and stalked back to the medical bay.

* * *

The _Jolly Roger_ was a shadow in the sky above the desolate wastelands of a remote, nameless planet. The Corsairs had chosen to construct their base far from well-traveled solar systems, and the location of their headquarters was a jealously guarded secret. In fact, a majority of the Corsairs were never told the location of the planet, and attempting to discover the coordinates was punishable by death.

They were not nearly wealthy enough to afford an orbiting spaceport or anything so extravagant. The Corsairs were forced to rely on Warlord T'Lanus for their munitions and repairs. Their headquarters were used as a staging area for liberated slaves and a prison for captured Batarians. It was also the place where Blackbeard, the leader of the Corsairs, spent most of his time coordinating the Corsair's efforts.

Blackbeard, named after the notorious pirate of antiquity, had taken to his affectionate title with a passion, spreading the fear of God through the stars. Captain Crow couldn't authorize anything as audacious as the hand-off of a previously undiscovered alien race to the Alliance without Blackbeard's approval, and he hadn't wanted to explain the situation over a comm buoy that may or may not have been tapped by other interested parties. The life of a pirate wasn't an easy one, after all.

The base was constructed to be difficult to find from orbit. The only part that was visible above ground was the entrance, which was cleverly disguised in the foothills of a mountain range. Everything else was underground. This served to protect the compound from the inexorable gale force winds that constantly stripped the surface of the planet to its bones and from orbital bombardment.

Doctor Orlov had only seen one planet as inhospitable as this one, and that was Mars. The Red Planet had a few advantages over the dirtball below the speeding passenger shuttle, but it didn't really matter in the end. Neither planet had a breathable atmosphere. The nameless world had gravity which was more comparable to Earth's, but the soil was mostly iron sand. It brought new meaning to the name 'Red Planet.'

Both planets were freezing at night and sweltering hot when the sun came up. Both planets lacked the protection of a magnetic field, causing dangerous levels of solar radiation to bake the surface at regular intervals. Meteors seemed to gravitate to those places which were most dear to the hearts of the settlers.

As if all of that wasn't bad enough, Mars seemed to have inspired this nameless planet with its sandstorms. While the storms on Mars could be terrible, nothing compared to the tempests that whipped up in the expansive deserts of the Corsair headquarters, sweeping across thousands of miles in less than a day. The topography of the planet was liable to change in minutes. Dunes could be leveled or replaced by valleys, and mountains were ground down to nothing by the constant barrage of biting sand.

Yes...it was a terrible place. Which was exactly why no one would ever think that there was a group of nearly a thousand pirates living in the dirt beneath the hellish surface.

The shuttle set down on a relatively flat expanse of sand and Doctor Orlov slid his helmet over his head. He felt the pressure inside his hardsuit change as the seals caught, then he took a deep breath, flexing his fingers in their gauntlets.

"You ready?" Captain Crow spoke in his ear. Orlov nodded, and the captain took his arm to lead him out of the shuttle.

As their pilot flew back into low orbit, the two men began walking. Orlov had no idea where he was going; he wasn't ranked high enough to know the location of the entrance. That was why his helm had been modified to make him entirely blind.

"Don't worry," Crow said. "There are no thresher maws here."

"Thanks for that," Orlov scoffed. "Just what I wanted to think about while stumbling around blindly on a desert planet."

"It's not far," Crow reassured him, leading him by his arm. The doctor's steps were tentative and it was slow going. By the time Crow brought them to a stop, Doctor Orlov felt like they had been walking for hours.

The sound of stone grinding on stone startled him, but he managed to keep his feet despite the sudden cacophony. Captain Crow steadied him by pushing on his shoulder, and they stumbled for a few steps before the sound rattled Orlov's hardsuit once again.

"Ah, that's better," Crow said. The doctor felt his captain's hands on either side of his neck, then the clasps of his helmet hissed open and he could see again. He leveled an unimpressed glare at the scarred captain.

"What?" the man asked, holding his hands up as if to say, 'it wasn't me.'

"Let's get this over with, then," Orlov muttered, glancing around the claustrophobic corridor. It looked like the tunnels had been carved out of the sandstone and reinforced with steel. Bright white lights were dangling from the ceiling, connected by thin black wires.

The whole thing was reminiscent of an old dusty mineshaft.

There were four guards stationed in a square room at the end of the short entryway, and they were fully armored. They didn't react much when Captain Crow stepped into the room, and they continued doing whatever they had been doing when the pair of them passed through to the next corridor. Which was ostensibly guarding the entrance, although against _what,_ Orlov wasn't sure. Who was going to come stumbling into a _hidden_ base on a desert planet in the middle of God-forsaken deep space?

There was a man dressed in dark gray clothes which resembled an Alliance officer's uniform speaking with another fellow who was wearing mostly armor, save for the fact that his helmet appeared to be missing.

"... _Roger_ returned just a few hours ago. Ah, look who it is! Captain Crow!" the uniformed man turned to them, and Orlov wondered if this was the fabled Blackbeard. "And one of your crewmen? Surely not."

Crow looked vaguely uncomfortable. "I essentially blinded him on the way here, sir. I thought my chief medical officer should be present to discuss what we have discovered."

Blackbeard—if that was who this man was—looked dissatisfied. "Well, the man had better hope that this is important, or he won't be leaving this base for a long time. Come with me, I'll find us a conference room where we can discuss this _mystery_ of yours."

Orlov swallowed. Captain Crow gave him an apologetic shrug as they walked away and left the armored fellow alone in the corridor.

"Did everything go well on your last excursion, Captain?" Blackbeard asked suddenly as they rounded the corner.

Crow blinked. "Yes, sir. No casualties. We commandeered a Batarian frigate with civilian armaments. It looks like it belonged to Lord Branka."

"Ah, the little upstart, then?" Blackbeard barked a laugh which resounded in the hall like a rifle shot. "Put a burr under his saddle. Good. He's been sitting pretty on the edges of known space for too long."

They reached what appeared to be an office, except it was devoid of the usual office implements like tables and bookshelves. Instead there was a collection of chairs, all of different designs and sizes, and what might have been a refrigerator. The room smelled like alcohol.

"Take a seat and explain yourself. You came back early," Blackbeard said. His voice was lacking in its congeniality, and Doctor Orlov had a feeling that there was an implied threat.

"Well, sir, when we raided the vessel it was already under attack. The slave that they were transporting—there was only one on board—had stolen a carbine and was mowing down the crewmen," Captain Crow explained. "That isn't all that strange by itself. What is strange is the fact that the slave managed to take out half of the crew before we got on board. When my team arrived, they discovered that the alien had been incapacitated whilst trying to storm the bridge."

"Okay," Blackbeard said. He appeared unimpressed.

"The slave was not of a species that Humanity has encountered before."

Blackbeard suddenly leaned back in his chair and narrowed his eyes. Orlov was struck by the thought that a man named Blackbeard lacked a beard of any sort, let alone a black one. "Well, what was it then?"

"We don't know," Crow said honestly. "I have the alien on board the _Jolly Roger._ In the brig. After seeing what it could do I wasn't taking any chances."

Blackbeard sighed. "Tell me what you want to do," he said after some deliberation.

"I was planning on using a stolen Batarian shuttle, one of our guests here at the headquarters, and a sedative to drop the alien in Alliance space with a distress beacon. Once they pick him up, they'll know that the Hegemony is breaking their treaties with the Council and can take advantage of it," Crow laid down the bare-bones of their plan.

"It's a good idea," Blackbeard said with a nod. "Except for a few things. How will you make it look like the alien broke free from its restraints to kill the shuttle pilot? And how do you intend to get the shuttle to Alliance space without leaving its navigational computer intact?"

Crow glanced at the doctor and he interpreted that as a sign that he should start talking. "I developed a sedative that should be effective for the alien," he said. "I am sure that the creature can squirrel its way out of restraints."

"It's easy, then. Have the alien kill the Batarian, tranq it, load up the shuttle with the corpse and the restrained alien, and tow it into Alliance territory," Blackbeard summarized.

"That's the plan," Crow confirmed. "I wanted to get your 'go ahead' before we did anything, since the Corsairs will probably not be seeing the shuttle again."

The pirate warlord shrugged. "Its fine with me. You know the protocol if the Alliance gets wind of your involvement."

Captain Crow swallowed nervously. "Yes, sir."

"Good," the intimidating man stood up and brushed off his knees. "Care for a drink before you get on your way?


	14. Chapter 13

A/N: This is the last update until December, since I'm off again to college this week and will be focusing on classes. I have some backlog that I could publish, but I prefer to keep ahead of what I'm posting to give me time to edit, so I'll just hold off for a few months. Sorry to disappoint. Anyway, see you in December!

Chapter 13

The cell was not really designed well enough to hold him. Thakrus knew this. Even if they had bound his hands together, it would have been a simple matter for him to overpower the female who brought food to him, and she was not escorted by armed guards. All he had to do was wait for the cell door to open and deal with the Rutash herself, and he would be free.

But he didn't.

He knew that there was nothing good that would come from a jailbreak. Even if he managed to clear the entire ship, he still had no way of piloting it, and no way of communicating with someone who could. He remained docile, spending his time stretching and exercising as well as he could in the cramped space of his cell.

Most of the time he sat around and tried to listen to the voices of the aliens in the ship as they spoke to each other. For the first time in a long time Thakrus actually cared to interpret the sounds that they made, but it was very difficult to gather anything of importance from their speech when he didn't have visual cues to accompany the nonsensical languages they spoke. He managed to determine that the aliens were not speaking the same languages. In fact, there were at least three distinct patterns that he could identify from the bowels of the ship.

Sometimes they spoke too quietly for him to hear anything more than a murmur. His acute senses could pick up a normal tone of voice on the opposite side of the ship. He had already mapped out the corridors and compartments of the vessel by the sounds that he heard.

There were things that he would rather not have been privy to, but that was the price of being a Surrassi in an alien world he supposed. They hadn't designed the vessel with noise pollution in mind.

The Batarian cities had been almost deafening in their intensity. No Surrassi would ever choose to live in such a noisy place, and Thakrus figured if an alien ever visited a Surrassi city they would find the place eerily quiet.

Any time that he didn't spend eavesdropping was spent thinking about the Rutash female. She was the only one that he had seen save for the occasional glimpse of an armored guard outside his cell, so he used her behavior as a tentative estimation of what he might expect from the others. It was an exercise in futility, trying to figure the Rutashes out.

He didn't even know if they _felt_ the same emotions as Surrassi. It was distinctly possible that he was projecting Surrassi attributes onto creatures who expressed similar behavior without the same psychological themes.

Still, he had nothing but time to lose.

He was beginning to think that things had finally changed for the better. The Batarians had no control over him now. The thought that Lord Branka had lost one of his precious slaves amused the big Surrassi, but only for a little while. That line of thought strayed too close to old memories which were better left forgotten.

His whole existence on board the Rutash vessel stank of anticlimax. He hadn't had the pleasure of gutting Gimp when he escaped. Indeed, he had been unconscious when his collar had been removed. But even outside the custody of the Batarian arena master, Thakrus was still not free. He just had a different cell, and this time he had no burning hatred to motivate him.

He was lost, and he knew it.

He heard footsteps approaching his cell and stood, wondering if the female was returning with food. But that wasn't right, it had not been long enough since his last meal. There were three sets of footfalls. On guard, Thakrus backed away from the door and scented the air, hoping to identify the approaching creatures.

He recognized the pungent, earthy smell immediately. Batarian. Unlike the Rutashes, Batarians did not smother their scent with perfumes or deodorizing chemicals, which made the distinct aroma common to every member of their race easier to identify. It was not an unpleasant smell, but it came from an unpleasant source. Thakrus growled just thinking about Batarians.

He despised their entire species. A distant, forgotten part of himself remembered that such hatred was unjustified, but the overwhelming consensus supported the simple fact that he had never met a Batarian who had good intentions toward him. He felt within his right to reciprocate in kind.

Therefore, when the cell door opened and a Batarian stepped into his cell armed with a knife, Thakrus took two swift steps and engaged the creature as soon as he laid eyes upon it. The Batarian yelped and thrust with his long, wicked knife, but Thakrus caught its wrist, ignoring the shallow cut that he gained on the side of his arm. He easily kept the knife's point away from his torso, and crushed the bones in the Batarian's arm, forcing it to drop its weapon.

Unarmored and unarmed, it stood no chance. Thakrus growled deep in his chest and bared his teeth, thoroughly enjoying his sense of control as he wrapped his fingers around the creature's scrawny neck and lifted it up, squirming, into the air. The door had closed behind it and Thakrus understood that his captors had thrown the Batarian into his cell to die.

For what reason? Did it matter?

The Batarian was gibbering and prying at the fingers which had his throat in a grip like a steel vice. Thakrus' crimson eyes were boring holes in the creature's flat skull. Thakrus turned and slammed the Batarian onto the crate with enough force that he heard bones crack. A fractured vertebrae or cracked rib.

The Batarian screamed. A high-pitched, agonizing sound which rattled in the cell's confining walls and stung Thakrus' ears. He snarled and crushed the alien's neck, cutting off its supply of air.

Wide, terrified black eyes stared up at the ruthless Surrassi who held perfectly still, like stone, until the Batarian was dead.

Thakrus had thought the Rutashes were different than the Batarians, but they seemed just as willing to pit their prisoners against each other for sport. Snorting derisively, Thakrus tossed the corpse of the unfortunate Batarian at the threshold of the door, as a message. Let them take the creature.

When the door hissed open, one of the Rutashes was standing with a gun in his hand. Thakrus blinked and felt something impact his chest. It stung. He hissed and glanced down, spotting the thin shaft of a dart sticking from his fur. Two more sprouted from his chest before he realized what they were doing. By that time, it was too late.

He growled dangerously and tried to reach his shooter before the door closed. When he stepped forward, however, his leg seemed to crumple beneath him like paper and he hit the ground. The last thing he saw as darkness swallowed his vision was the dead eyes of the Batarian prisoner.

* * *

"Fifteen hundred is good," the Turian rumbled. The sound of his voices speaking in harmony was enough to make Joker's skin crawl. "Your captain will be pleased."

With that ringing endorsement, the SpecTRe turned and walked back down the hall of the CIC. When Joker was sure the big, scaly guy with talons was gone, he glanced over at his copilot, Lieutenant Alenko. "I hate that guy."

Alenko raised his eyes to the ceiling. "He compliments you...so you hate him."

Joker heard the footsteps but he figured it was one of the other officers returning to his post. "Good is walking out of the bathroom with your fly zipped up. I just flung us halfway across the galaxy and hit a target the size of a pin head. Now that's incredible." Joker shook his head. "Besides, SpecTRes gives me the creeps."

"Why's that?" Alenko asked.

"I don't know, something about the gestapo vibes I'm getting turns me off," Joker replied dryly. "What's he doing on an Alliance shakedown run, anyway?"

The voice that answered was not Lieutenant Alenko. "I'd like to know that as well, but Captain Anderson told me it is need to know. Like everything else to do with SpecTRes I'd imagine."

"Hey, Commander!" Joker said with fake cheer. "Nice of you to drop in."

"You know how I am," the usually taciturn man replied. "Can't help but join in when I hear my crew gossiping."

A light _ping_ distracted them, and Joker slapped a button on his pilot seat. The Captain's low timbre rumbled through the speakers. "Send Commander Shepard to the comm room."

"Will do," Joker affirmed. "Be warned, Captain, I think Nihlus is heading your way."

"He's already here, Flight Lieutenant."

Shepard saw Joker shake his head and sighed. "Nice," was all he said as he departed from the cockpit. He heard Alenko start to rib his friend about it and smiled.

When they had reassigned him from his N7 team he had been upset. Understandably, since he had spent almost four years serving with those guys only to be reassigned to an entirely new unit. That wasn't the way that N7s worked. Still, if he was going to have the rank Commander foisted onto him, he was glad that he had a crew which was as comfortable as the _SSV Normandy's._ They had only been underway for a single day and everyone had already settled into their routines like they'd been working together for months.

Captain Anderson had told him that the ship was crewed by some of the best the Alliance had to offer. Shepard had asked himself why _he_ was there if that were the case. What happened to Captain Bron or Master Sergeant Morrel? Anderson had only replied that Alliance brass had faith in Shepard.

When he reached the comm room and stepped inside, he saw the SpecTRe, Nihlus, standing in front of a wide view-screen, scanning a sensor report. Shepard spotted what had caught his attention immediately. The Turian glanced over when Shepard reached the screen. "Shepard. I was hoping you'd arrive early. It gives us a moment to talk."

Translators struggled with Turian speech. Understandably, since there was so much packed into every syllable. Shepard wasn't an expert, but he knew that their vocal cords operated in harmony, and the subtle differences in the tones between them could connote vastly different meanings to the same words. It was one of the reasons the Relay 314 Incident had been so bloody; Humans took a long time to interpret what the Turians were saying, and the Turians just hadn't cared. Not at first.

"What about?" Shepard asked guardedly. He held nothing against Nihlus, although he had read the man's service record—the parts that weren't classified or redacted, at least—and he disagreed with some of the decisions he had made. In the end, they were both soldiers and they did what was necessary.

"The colony that we're going to, Eden Prime. It is something of a symbol among Humans is it not?" Nihlus asked, glancing back at the view-screen, where the scanners were continuing to describe the distress beacon.

"Shouldn't we be discussing the distress call?" Shepard asked.

Nihlus shrugged and continued as if Shepard hadn't spoken. "It stands for Human resilience. Your ability to found colonies far from the home world, and protect them as well. But how well protected is it really?"

Shepard crossed his arms over his chest and regarded the big alien. "It would be better protected if the Alliance was allowed to field a larger military. Besides, pirates tend to pick on easier targets. They learned their lesson from Elysium."

"Yes, I suppose they did," Nihlus agreed quietly. Shepard silently wondered what the hell the Turian was on about.

At that moment, Captain Anderson entered the comm room. "Good, you're both here. We've picked up a distress call and are moving to investigate. It's consistent with Batarian protocols, so the crew is on alert."

"Batarians? This far into the Traverse?" Shepard asked.

"It's worrisome," Anderson agreed. "I do apologize for the delay in our mission, SpecTRe, but Alliance protocol demands that able vessels respond to distress signals."

"Understandable," the Turian rumbled, although he looked slightly piqued. "How long until we reach the source of the signal?"

"A half hour. That gives us enough time to read the Commander in on your assignment," Anderson said, giving the Turian a significant look. "I think its best that he knows what is going on before we reach Eden Prime."

The SpecTRe inclined his head, and Anderson addressed Shepard. "This is more than a simple shakedown run."

"That much is obvious," Shepard pointed out. The dark-skinned captain smirked.

"Archaeologists on Eden Prime unearthed a Prothean beacon. Intact," Anderson said. The only change in Shepard's expression was a calculating look in his eyes. "We're picking it up for more thorough study."

"The Alliance traded it to the Council in return for political leverage," Shepard summarized, glancing at Nihlus.

Anderson shrugged. "You could say that. We didn't have much of a choice once Councilor Tevos got wind of the project. Alliance Intelligence knows that the STG was the group who released the information."

Shepard would have been upset that the STG was spying on the Alliance, but he knew that Alliance Intelligence did the same to everyone else, so it would have been hypocritical. Besides, that was the nature of politics.

Nihlus offered his own interpretation. "Such a momentous discovery should be shared instead of hoarded," he said simply.

Shepard, ever the cynic, only nodded. "So we pick up the beacon and take it to the Citadel. Is that all?"

"Not quite," Anderson said. "The Alliance wants representation in the SpecTRes, and you are our best candidate for the position. Nihlus is here to evaluate you."

Shepard frowned. "My duty is to Humanity, sir. My place is with my people."

"I understand the sentiment," Anderson replied sympathetically. "But having a Human SpecTRe is the first step on bringing the Alliance to the next level of interstellar politics."

"I feel that the SpecTRes would benefit from an agent of your abilities, Shepard," Nihlus added his two-cents. "As long as the reports on your accomplishments were accurate, you'll have my recommendation."

"It doesn't really feel like a choice," Shepard told his captain.

Anderson shrugged. "Go prepare the ground team. We might have to perform a boarding action to investigate the situation at the distress signal."

"Yes, sir."

Shepard took his leave, still mulling over the revelation that he had just been given. A SpecTRe? Whatever he had been expecting from this mission, _that_ had not been it.

Still, it could be worse he supposed. That was about as optimistic as John Shepard ever got.

The ground team of the Normandy consisted of Commander Shepard, Lieutenant Alenko, Specialist Smith, Corporal Jenkins, and Corporal Chekov. Less than half a squad. Originally Shepard had been suspicious of the small number, but once he saw the Normandy he realized that it was necessary. As a reconnaissance frigate they were lucky to have as many crewmen as they had, adding enough space for a full squad would have been unfeasible, especially given the purpose of the vessel. It wasn't really designed for orbital assault or boarding hostile vessels.

They were fully equipped in about five minutes and standing around the CIC, trying to stay out of the way as the rest of the crew coordinated their approach.

Shepard stood in the cockpit with Captain Anderson, and he could tell Joker wasn't really enjoying the audience.

"Reducing warp factor," he muttered, fingers dancing across the bright orange screens. Shepard was always amazed when he watched pilots at their work. "We're in real space. Five thousand kilometers out."

Anderson turned to one of the other nine officers. "Have you identified the source of the distress call?"

"Not yet, sir," the young woman responded crisply. "Wait. There! A small FTL shuttle. Looks like it's dead in the water."

"Joker?"

Flight Lieutenant Moreau brought a visual up on one of his monitors. At this distance, even the highly magnified cameras on the hull could only make out a shadowy outline of the shuttle, but it looked like what Shepard would have expected. Small, with big engines.

"Could be booby trapped," he said. Captain Anderson looked troubled, but he told Joker to take them closer anyways.

The visual cleared up and displayed a dilapidated little pill shuttle. There were significant pocks in the armor, especially around the engines. The running lights were dead.

"Well," Anderson said, turning to Commander Shepard, "What do you think?"

"It's best to bring the _Normandy_ beside the shuttle and spacewalk to it, sir. Bringing into the cargo hold would be disastrous if it was rigged to blow."

"The space-walker would be in for a nasty surprise if that were the case," Anderson pointed out. His face was inscrutable.

"He'd have a good chance of survival if he wasn't on board the shuttle," Shepard replied unconvincingly. "If it were me I would put the trigger on the landing struts. The moment gravity kicks in, well..."

"Alright, who's the lucky volunteer?" Anderson relented.

Shepard shrugged. "I'll do it. I can defuse any explosives if there are any, and I can pilot a shuttle that size once I am on board."

"I doubt it can fly," Joker put in. "Look at the carnage!"

Shepard glanced back on screen and saw that the entire rear end of the shuttle was mangled terribly. He winced. "Still. I've done this sort of thing before."

Anderson looked reluctant, but he finally nodded. Joker brought the Normandy within fifty meters and matched the shuttles current motion vectors. Shepard fastened his helmet over his head and felt the seals as they popped shut. "Captain?"

"I hear you," Anderson verified the helmet's comm systems.

Shepard stepped into the airlock and hooked the magnetic tether the small of his back. When the inner airlock hatch closed, he hit the release and was exposed to a vacuum. The eezo core of the _Normandy_ provided gravity to the exterior hull, so his feet were still firmly anchored on the floor. Taking a few shuffling steps, Shepard steadied himself and pushed off.

He drifted into space, towards the shuttle. His helmet showed him the distance to his target. "Thirty meters," he said quietly. "Twenty five."

"Commander, the airlock could be trapped as well," Anderson warned.

"Understood," Shepard replied, putting his arms out. The airlock was surrounded by a metal railing. It took ten seconds for him to reach the shuttle, and when he did he basically collided straight into its side, using his hands to keep himself from bouncing back towards the Normandy.

Crawling across the side of the hull, Shepard eventually hung suspended in front of the shuttle's airlock. He activated his omni-tool and pressed his hand against the door. N7s had a fancy little tool that could identify most common explosive through walls. It also constructed a three dimensional image of the room, displaying objects as small as a fingernail.

Shepard inspected the diagram. "Nothing in the airlock. I'm opening the door."

He swung his feet up so that his body was out of the way of the hatch. If there was an explosion it wouldn't blow the whole door into his face from this position. The manual override for the airlock was a simple lever, and Shepard steeled himself before activating the magnetic locks on his boots and pulling it.

The door cracked open and he held his breath. Ten seconds passed. "Looks like we're good," he said, working the lever. Every pull pushed the door open another six inches, but it was slow work. Eventually the airlock was open and Shepard swung himself inside. His feet hit the ground. Taking a single step, he used the same tool to inspect the interior of the shuttle.

There was a body on the floor, but otherwise the cabin was empty.

"Looks like there's someone inside. Release the tether."

"Then you'll be stuck on the shuttle," Anderson said.

"I know," Shepard assured him. "I can't close the door behind me with it on."

Once the tether was clear of the threshold, Shepard hit the airlock release. The lights flickered as the door slammed shut, and a computerized voice began to speak. "Welcome aboard," it said, then fizzled out before it could complete the decontamination sequence. The airlock filled with air, which meant that the backup power systems were still operational.

Shepard drew his rifle and opened the inner hatch. "Damn," he muttered when he saw the Batarian. "Are you seeing this?"

"Yeah," Joker's voice responded. He was watching the helmet camera. "Looks like he went down hard."

A Batarian was sprawled on the floor. His wrist and his neck were bent awkwardly, and Shepard knew that both of them had been broken. There were deep gouges on the sides of the alien's neck. Activating the flashlight of his gun, Shepard stepped into the cabin and turned to the left.

"Whoa!" Joker hissed. Shepard nearly pulled the trigger when he saw the huge furry creature standing at the back of the cabin, but it wasn't making any move to attack him, so he hesitated. It was taller than Nihlus and just as broad, with arms like a gorilla and legs like tree trunks. Brown fur with white patterns covered its body, save for its face and a leathery, whip-like tail which seemed to have a mind of its own. Its face was vaguely feline, with a protruding jaw and narrow, crimson eyes. The disconcerting thing was the fact that its eyes were glowing.

"Don't move," he said. It was a pointless command, since the alien wasn't moving anyway. The creature cocked its head to the right, peering down at Shepard as if it were confused. "Get down on your knees!"

"I don't think it can understand you," Joker said unhelpfully.

"Commander," Anderson's voice finally spoke in his ear. "We're bringing the Normandy around."

"I still haven't cleared the ship of traps, sir," Shepard objected.

"Without the reactor, I don't see any way the shuttle could be volatile. Sit tight," Anderson overruled him.

Shepard sighed and returned to his little face off. The alien was still eerily motionless, save for its long tail which was swaying behind its legs. Shepard had the feeling it was trying to determine if it could get to him before he pulled the trigger.

Shepard saw the retraining table that was leaned against the wall. It looked like it had been snapped in half and the bonds had been chewed through. How had the pilot not noticed that happening behind his back?

The shuttle jostled slightly as the _Normandy_ swallowed it with its gaping cargo bay. It was a few meters longer than the Mako and twice as tall, but it fit. Shepard felt the exact moment that the shuttle was subjected to the _Normandy's_ gravity.

"The ground team is outside the airlock," Anderson said. "Just bring the alien out of the shuttle."

 _How the hell am I meant to do that?_ Shepard sighed, taking one hand from his rifle to gesture the creature forward. He stepped back, towards the pilot's seat. Slowly, the alien stepped closer. Shepard hit the emergency release beside the airlock and heard the outer door open.

Belatedly he realized that this could have killed the creature, if the cargo hold hadn't had its atmosphere restored. Luckily when both the doors opened there was only a loud _whoosh_ of air as the pressure normalized. Shepard gestured with the barrel of his gun and the alien stepped into the airlock.

"What are we going to do with it?" Shepard asked as he followed it cautiously, keeping its back squarely in his sights. The alien slid out of the shuttle and fell a meter to the deck of the cargo hold, taking it out of Shepard's sights. He wasn't worried, since there were five other people, including Nihlus with his ridiculous armament, training weapons on it.

"Take it up to the med bay," Anderson said.

Shepard _really_ didn't want to get into the cargo elevator with an alien this size. He figured that if anyone could subdue it in such close quarters it would be Nihlus.

"Nihlus, we're taking it to the med bay," he called out, stepping to the edge of the shuttle's airlock and looking down. The alien was swiveling its head, inspecting the assembled soldiers.

The Turian hesitated for only a moment before stepping forward and seizing the alien's arm, keeping his weapon trained on its chest. It didn't respond except to narrow its eyes.

As Nihlus led it towards the elevator, Shepard jumped down and joined his team as they followed in silence. Once they were in the elevator, Shepard tensed up, waiting for what he felt was an inevitable explosion from the massive creature, but it stayed completely docile. Never made a sound.

Dr. Chakwas met the sight of the massive alien with a mixture of curiosity and surprise. "Commander, you bring me the nicest presents," she said lightly. The creature pinned her under its crimson stare, and Nihlus pushed it towards one of the beds.

Captain Anderson stepped into the med bay a moment later, and the usually imposing man was dwarfed by the stature of their new arrival. "Shepard, I want you to escort the alien everywhere. The _Normandy_ doesn't have a brig, but we can lock it in the supply room temporarily. Dr. Chakwas, if you would be kind enough to take a full series of medical scans for my report, I would appreciate it. Blood and tissue as well."

"Of course," she said. When the Captain left to send a message to his superiors, Shepard thought Nihlus would have accompanied him, but instead the SpecTRe remained where he was, regarding the alien with his hard green eyes.

Shepard settled in for a long vigil.


End file.
